HISTORY OF THE EARLY WORLD
II SEMESTER
CORE COURSE FOR BA HISTORY
(CUCBCSS - 2014 Admission)
UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION
Calicut university P.O, Malappuram Kerala, India
673 635.
762
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION
Core Course for BA History
II Semester
HISTORY OF THE EARLY WORLD
Prepared by:
Hamza Thodengal
Assistant Professor
Department of History
Govt. College Malappuram
Scrutinized by:
Sri. Ashraf Koyilothan Kandiyil,
Chairman, Board of Studies in History (UG),
Govt. College Mokeri
Layout:
Computer Section, SDE
©
Reserved
`
History of the early world
Page 2
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
CONTENTS
PAGES
MODULE – I
Pre-History
5
MODULE II
Bronze Age Civilizations
9
MODULE III
Iron Age Civilizations
21
MODULE IV
Decline of the Ancient World.
60
History of the early world
Page 3
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
HISTORY OF THE EARLY WORLD
Module I: Pre-History
Nature of pre historic societies-Palaeolithic Age
Mesolithic Age- Neolithic Age –Changes.
Module II: Bronze Age Civilizations
Features of civilizations- Gorden V Chiold
Mesopotamia- Egypt
Module III: Iron Age Civilizations
Hellenic and Hellenistic Civilizations Legacies
Roman Civilization- Legacies
Module IV: Decline of the Ancient World.
Decline of the Roman Empire – Changing social systems
Impact of Christianity
Transition to Medieval.
Map Study
1. Distribution of Important Paleolithic and Neolithic Settlements2. Important Bronze age Cities
3. Important Iron Age Centers
4. Early Trade Routes
History of the early world
Page 4
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
MODULE I
PRE HISTORY
Nature of Pre Historic Societies
The notion of "prehistory" began to surface during the Enlightenment in the
work of antiquarians who used the word 'primitive' to describe societies that existed
before written records. The first use of the word prehistory in English, however,
occurred in the Foreign Quarterly Review in 1836
Prehistory (meaning "before history", or "before knowledge acquired by
investigation", from the Latin word for "before”) is the span of time before recorded
history or the invention of writing systems. Prehistory refers to the period of human
existence before the availability of those written records with which recorded history
begins. More broadly, it can refer to all the time preceding human existence and the
invention of writing.
The term "prehistory" can refer to the vast span of time since the beginning of
the Universe, but more often it refers to the period since life appeared on Earth, or
even more specifically to the time since human-like beings appeared. In dividing up
human prehistory, pre historians typically use the three-age system, whereas
scholars of pre-human time periods typically use the well-defined geologic record
and its internationally defined stratum base within the geologic time scale. The
three-age system is the periodization of human prehistory into three consecutive
time periods, named for their respective predominant tool-making technologies: the
Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. This system emerged during the late
nineteenth century in the work of British, German and Scandinavian archaeologists,
antiquarians and anthropologists. Another division of history and prehistory can be
made between those written events that can be precisely dated by use of a
continuous calendar dating from current and those that can't. The loss of continuity
of calendar date most often occurs when a civilization falls and the language and
calendar fall into disuse. The current civilization therefore loses the ability to
precisely date events written through primary sources to events dated to current
calendar dating.
The occurrence of written materials varies generally to cultures classified
within either the late Bronze Age or within the Iron Age. Historians increasingly do
not restrict themselves to evidence from written records and are coming to rely more
upon evidence from the natural and social sciences, thereby blurring the distinction
between the terms "history" and "prehistory". This view has been articulated by
advocates of deep history.
This article is concerned with human prehistory, or the time since behaviourally and
anatomically modern humans first appear until the beginning of recorded history.
There are separate articles for the overall history of the Earth and the history of life
before humans.
Definition
By definition, there are no written records from human prehistory, so dating
of prehistoric materials is crucial. Clear techniques for dating were not welldeveloped until the 19th century.
History of the early world
Page 5
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
The primary researchers into human prehistory are prehistoric archaeologists
and physical anthropologists who use excavation, geologic and geographic surveys,
and other scientific analysis to reveal and interpret the nature and behaviour of preliterate and non-literate peoples. Human population geneticists and historical
linguists are also providing valuable insight for these questions. Cultural
anthropologists help provide context for societal interactions, by which objects of
human origin pass among people, allowing an analysis of any article that arises in a
human prehistoric context. Therefore, data about prehistory is provided by a wide
variety of natural and social sciences, such as palaeontology, biology, archaeology,
palynology, geology, archaeo-astronomy, comparative linguistics, anthropology,
molecular genetics and many others.
Human prehistory differs from history not only in terms of its chronology but
in the way it deals with the activities of archaeological cultures rather than named
nations or individuals. Restricted to material processes, remains and artifacts rather
than written records, prehistory is anonymous. Because of this, reference terms that
pre-historians use, such as Neanderthal or Iron Age are modern labels with
definitions sometimes subject to debate.
The date marking the end of prehistory in a particular culture or region, that
is, the date when relevant written historical records become a useful academic
resource, varies enormously from region to region. For example, in Egypt it is
generally accepted that prehistory ended around 3200 BCE, whereas in New Guinea
the end of the prehistoric era is set much more recently, at around 1900 CE. In
Europe the relatively well-documented classical cultures of Ancient Greece and
Ancient Rome had neighbouring cultures, including the Celts, and to a lesser extent
the Etruscans, with little or no writing, and historians must decide how much weight
to give to the often highly prejudiced accounts of these "prehistoric" cultures in
Greek and Roman literature.
Stone Age
Palaeolithic
"Palaeolithic" means "Old Stone Age," and begins with the first use of stone
tools. The Palaeolithic is the earliest period of the Stone Age.
The early part of the Palaeolithic is called the Lower Palaeolithic, which
predates Homo sapiens, beginning with Homo habilis and with the earliest stone tools,
dated to around 2.5 million years ago. Early Homo sapiens originated some 200,000
years ago, ushering in the Middle Palaeolithic. Anatomic changes indicating modern
language capacity also arise during the Middle Palaeolithic. The systematic burial of
the dead, the music, early art, and the use of increasingly sophisticated multi-part
tools are highlights of the Middle Palaeolithic.
Throughout the Palaeolithic, humans generally lived as nomadic huntergatherers. Hunter-gatherer societies tended to be very small and egalitarian, though
hunter-gatherer societies with abundant resources or advanced food-storage
techniques sometimes developed sedentary lifestyles with complex social structures
such as chiefdoms, and social stratification. Long-distance contacts may have been
established, as in the case of Indigenous Australian "highways."
History of the early world
Page 6
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
Mesolithic
The "Mesolithic," or "Middle Stone Age" (from the Greek "mesos," "middle,"
and "lithos," "stone") was the period in the development of human technology
between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods of the Stone Age.
The Mesolithic period began at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, some 10,000
BP, and ended with the introduction of agriculture, the date of which varied by
geographic region. In some areas, such as the Near East, agriculture was already
underway by the end of the Pleistocene, and there the Mesolithic is short and poorly
defined. In areas with limited glacial impact, the term "Epipalaeolithic" is sometimes
preferred.
Regions that experienced greater environmental effects as the last ice age
ended have a much more evident Mesolithic era, lasting millennia. In Northern
Europe, societies were able to live well on rich food supplies from the marshlands
fostered by the warmer climate. Such conditions produced distinctive human
behaviours that are preserved in the material record, such as the Maglemosian and
Azilian cultures. These conditions also delayed the coming of the Neolithic until as
late as 4000 BCE in northern Europe.
Remains from this period are few and far between, often limited to middens.
In forested areas, the first signs of deforestation have been found, although this
would only begin in earnest during the Neolithic, when more space was needed for
agriculture.
The Mesolithic is characterized in most areas by small composite flint tools —
microliths and microburins. Fishing tackle, stone adzes and wooden objects, e.g.
canoes and bows, have been found at some sites. These technologies first occur in
Africa, associated with the Azilian cultures, before spreading to Europe through the
Ibero-Maurusian culture of Northern Africa and the Kebaran culture of the Levant.
Independent discovery is not always ruled out.
Neolithic.
"Neolithic" means "New Stone Age." This was a period of primitive
technological and social development, toward the end of the "Stone Age". The
Neolithic period saw the development of early villages, agriculture, animal
domestication, tools and the onset of the earliest recorded incidents of warfare. The
Neolithic term is commonly used in the Old World, as its application to cultures in
the Americas and Oceania that did not fully develop metal-working technology
raises problems.
Forest gardening, originating in prehistory is thought to be the world's oldest
known form of agriculture (or agro ecosystem). Vere Gordon Childe then describes
an "Agricultural Revolution" occurring about the 10th millennium BCE with the
adoption of agriculture and domestication of plants and animals. The Sumerians first
began farming c. 9500 BCE. By 7000 BCE, agriculture had been developed in India
and Peru separately; by 6000 BCE, in Egypt; by 5000 BCE, in China. About 2700 BCE,
agriculture had come to Mesoamerica.
Although attention has tended to concentrate on the Middle East's Fertile
Crescent, archaeology in the Americas, East Asia and Southeast Asia indicates that
History of the early world
Page 7
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
agricultural systems, using different crops and animals, may in some cases have
developed there nearly as early. The development of organised irrigation, and the
use of a specialised workforce, by the Sumerians, began about 5500 BCE. Stone was
supplanted by bronze and iron in implements of agriculture and warfare.
Agricultural settlements had until then been almost completely dependent on stone
tools. In Eurasia, copper and bronze tools, decorations and weapons began to be
commonplace about 3000 BCE. After bronze, the Eastern Mediterranean region,
Middle East and China saw the introduction of iron tools and weapons.
The cradles of early civilizations were river valleys, such as the Euphrates and
Tigris valleys in Mesopotamia, the Nile valley in Egypt, the Indus valley in the
Indian subcontinent, and the Yangtze and Yellow River valleys in China. Some
nomadic peoples, such as the Indigenous Australians and the Bushmen of southern
Africa, did not practice agriculture until relatively recent times.
Agriculture made possible complex societies — civilizations in many climates.
States and markets emerged. Technologies enhanced people's ability to harness
nature and to develop transport and communication."The city represented a new
degree of human concentration, a new magnitude in settlement. Cities relied on
agricultural surplus. "Since the inhabitants of a city do not produce their own
food...cities cannot support themselves...thus exist only where agriculture is
successful enough to produce agricultural surplus." When hunter-gathering began to
be replaced by sedentary food production it became more profitable to keep animals
close at hand. Therefore, it became necessary to bring animals permanently to their
settlements, although in many cases there was a distinction between relatively
sedentary farmers and nomadic herders. The animals' size, temperament, diet,
mating patterns, and life span were factors in the desire and success in
domesticating animals. Animals that provided milk, such as cows and goats, offered
a source of protein that was renewable and therefore quite valuable. The animal’s
ability as a worker, as well as a food source, also had to be taken into account.
Besides being a direct source of food, certain animals could provide leather, wool,
hides, and fertilizer. Some of the earliest domesticated animals included dogs (East
Asia, about 15,000 years ago), sheep, goats, cows, and pigs.
It could be assumed that Neolithic people had believed in the life after death,
from their burial practices. It is seen that the dead were buried with weapons, food,
drink, pottery etc. The belief in Totems, is the image of an animal or plant as a
symbol for a clan , or a group of families living together. They also worshipped
natural forces like Sun, Moon, Stars and other forces, which they believed had
possessed supernatural powers to decide the destiny of whole tribe. The erection of
megalithic stones were found deferent parts of the world, were the Neolithic burial
places. Small clay figures of women have been found in many of the Neolithic sites
in the different parts of the world.
History of the early world
Page 8
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
MODULE II
Bronze Age Civilizations
The term Bronze Age refers to a period in human cultural development when
the most advanced metalworking (at least in systematic and widespread use)
included techniques for smelting copper and tin from naturally occurring
outcroppings of ores, and then combining them to cast bronze. These naturally
occurring ores typically included arsenic as a common impurity. Copper/tin ores are
rare, as reflected in the fact that there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before
3000 BCE. The Bronze Age forms part of the three-age system for prehistoric
societies. In this system, it follows the Neolithic in some areas of the world.
The Bronze Age is the earliest period for which we have direct written
accounts, since the invention of writing coincides with its early beginnings. It may
not be just coincidental that the most important early civilizations, Mesopotamia,
Egyptian, Minoan, Indian, and Chinese etc. arose in certain river valleys. It provided
the fertility, alluvial land, water transport facilities etc. The cooperative activities of
the people enabled them to develop early civilizations in these river valleys. As the
people could make surplus food some of them devoted their lives to invent new
techniques to further the living conditions. Architecture, sculpture, music, dance, etc,
began to develop as a part of the general growth.
The early civilizations are marked by the discovery and use of metals . It was
a great land mark in the history of mankind. It replaced crude stone tools.and
provided geat leap forwards.Metals were more durable than stone and could be
used to make a variety of tools impliments and weapons. However the first metal
discoversd was copper. Earlier man had no idea about copper ore and so he had
collected copper made by nature itself from river banks. During the course time men
came in to contact with another metal called Tin, which could not be used
independently for making stronger tools .It however necessitated man to learn the
technique of mixing different metals to make a new one and thus he mixed copper
with tin to produce its alloy a more stronger metal called Bronze. It was proved
harder and stronger than that of copper and could make more durable strong tools
and implements with it. The technology of the systematic method of extracting ores
and preparing new metals, like bronze {metallurgy} paved way for the beginning of
the first civilization in the history of mankind. These first civilizations were named
as Bronze Age Civilizations. The Bronze Age refers to a period of time in historic
societies, where metallurgy had advanced to the point of making bronze from
natural ores. It paved way for the rapid improvement in agriculture as well as in the
emergence of specialization of skills and knowledge. Bronze Age primarily took
place in between 3500 and 1200 BCE and is traditionally divided into Early, Middle
and Later Bronze ages, with progressively more sophisticated metallurgy
culminating in the discovery of iron at a later stage. The beginning of the Bronze
Age should have occurred about 5500years ago in the present day areas turkey, Iran,
and Iraq; which were also the cradle of the first human civilization. In India it is
History of the early world
Page 9
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
estimated that the beginning of the Bronze Age took place in around 3300BCE with
the Harappan or Indus Valley civilization.
The increase in agriculture due to the introduction of more sophisticated tools
and implements of irrigation system enabled several people to free themselves from
involving in agricultural activities. Side by side other activities like trade, toole
making etc were also developed. It also resulted to the development of towns and
cities. The first cities were developed either in the form of the seat of the ruling class
or trade or centre of religious importance.
The major centres of early Bronze Age were the areas around Mediterranean
and Aegean Sea, the Indus Valley, Hwang-Ho Valley in China and the Valleys of
Tigris and Euphrates and the river Nile. These civilizations had developed a unique
character in its own contribution to human progress. Each of these civilizations had
developed an organized political and social system, trade and commerce complex,
religious beliefs, writing system art and science and mathematics.
The joining together of various communities in a large scale cooperative effort
was a part of their quest for increasing agriculture production. Cooperative efforts of
communities were required for deferent type irrigation activities like construction of
canals, dykes etc. Canals could take water into far away cultivable land and the
dykes had to be put up to protect settlements from floods. Thus the requirements of
irrigation helped in bragging together many people under a central authority or
government, especially in cities when such as authority came in to being, it had the
responsibility to keep order, to make laws and to look after the affairs of the city. It
was the beginning of the rudimentary form of government, which required the
services of a body of persons.
The government has to make and record laws, maintain accounts, decide
disputes and communicate with the people it is governing. Thus some form of
writing has to be devised. All the early bronze age civilization had developed some
form of writing in the form of script and the writing marked the beginning of the
historical period. All these early civilizations had a common positive characteristic in
that they change the human scale of things. They bring together the cooperative
efforts of large numbers of men than any earlier societies and usually do this by
physically bringing them together in large agglomerations; it is usually marked by
urbanisation.
Features of Civilizations: Gordon V Child
Vere Gordon Childe (1892 –1957), better known as V. Gordon Childe, was an
Australian archaeologist and philologist who specialized in the study of European
prehistory. Working most of his life as an academic in the United Kingdom for the
University of Edinburgh and then the Institute of Archaeology, London, he wrote
many influential books and was an early proponent of culture-historical archaeology
and Marxist archaeology.
Born in Sydney, New South Wales to a middle-class family of English descent,
Childe studied Classics at the University of Sydney before moving to England to
study Classical archaeology at the University of Oxford. Here, he embraced the
socialist movement and campaigned against the First World War. Returning to
History of the early world
Page 10
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
Australia in 1917, he was prevented from working in academia because of his
socialist activism, instead working for the Australian Labour Party. Immigrating to
London in 1921, he continued his research into European prehistory through various
journeys across the continent, publishing his findings in academic papers and books
and introducing the concept of an archaeological culture into British archaeology.
From 1927 through to 1946 he worked as the Abercromby Professor of
Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, overseeing excavation of the unique
Neolithic settlement of Skara Brae and the chambered tomb of Maeshowe, both in
Orkney, Scotland. Becoming co-founder and president of The Prehistoric Society, he
embraced Marxism and became a noted sympathiser with the Soviet Union. From
1947 to 1957 he worked as director of the Institute of Archaeology, continuing to
publish his research. Upon retirement, he returned home to the Australian Blue
Mountains, there committing suicide.
Widely regarded as one of the most important archaeologists and prehistorians of his generation, he became known as the "great synthesizer" for his work
in synthesizing regional research into a broader picture of Near Eastern and
European prehistory. He was also renowned for his emphasis on revolutionary
technological and economic developments in human society, such as the Neolithic
Revolution and the Urban Revolution, in this manner being influenced by Marxist
ideas on societal development.
Childe continued writing and publishing books on archaeology, beginning
with a series of works following on from The Dawn of European Civilisation and The
Aryans by compiling and synthesising data from across Europe. First was The Most
Ancient Near East (1928), which assembled information from across Mesopotamia
and India, setting a background from which the spread of farming and other
technologies into Europe could be understood? This was followed by The Danube in
Prehistory (1929) which examined the archaeology along the Danube river,
recognising it as the natural boundary dividing the Near East from Europe; Childe
believed that it was via the Danube that new technologies travelled westward in
prehistory. The book introduced the concept of an archaeological culture to Britain
from Germany, revolutionising the theoretical approach of British archaeology.
Another famous work of Child was “Man Makes Himself” in which he combines
both bronze and Iron Age revolutions into a singular urban revolution.
The term "urban revolution" was introduced in the 1930s by V. Gordon Childe,
an Australian archaeologist. Childe also coined the term Neolithic Revolution to
describe the earlier process by which Hunter-Gatherer Societies domesticated crops
and animals and began a farming lifestyle. Childe was the first to synthesize and
organize the large volume of new archaeological data in the early 20th century in
social terms. Whereas previous archaeologists had concentrated on chronology and
technology, Childe applied concepts and theories from the social sciences to
interpret archaeological finds. Childe first discussed the Urban Revolution in his
1936 book, Man Makes Himself, and then his 1950 article in the journal Town Planning
Review brought the concept to a much larger audience. In that paper, he presented a
10-point model for the changes that characterized the Urban Revolution:
History of the early world
Page 11
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
1. Large population and large settlements (cities)
2. Full-time specialization and advanced division of labour
3. Production of an agricultural surplus to fund government and a differentiated
society
4. Monumental public architecture
5. A ruling class
6. Writing
7. Exact and predictive sciences (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, calendars)
8. Sophisticated art styles
9. Long-distance trade
10. The state
Although sometimes interpreted as a model of the origins of cities and urbanism,
Childe's concept in fact describes the transition from agricultural villages to statelevel, urban societies. This change, which occurred independently in several parts of
the world, is recognized as one of the most significant changes in human Sociocultural revolution. Although contemporary models for the origins of complex urban
societies have progressed beyond Childe's original formulation, there is general
agreement that he correctly identified one of the most far-reaching social
transformations prior to the Industrial Revolution, as well as the major processes
involved in the change.
MESOPOTAMIA
Mesopotamia land between rivers "land of rivers" is a name for the area of the
Tigris–Euphrates river system, corresponding to modern-day Iraq, Kuwait, the north
eastern section of Syria and to a much lesser extent south eastern Turkey and smaller
parts of south western Iran.
Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization by the Western world,
Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the Akkadian, Babylonian, and
Assyrian empires, all native to the territory of modern-day Iraq. In the Iron Age, it
was controlled by the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires. The indigenous
Sumerians and Akkadians (including Assyrians and Babylonians) dominated
Mesopotamia from the beginning of written history (c. 3100 BC) to the fall of
Babylon in 539 BC, when it was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire. It fell to
Alexander the Great in 332 BC, and after his death, it became part of the Greek
Seleucid Empire.
Around 150 BC, Mesopotamia was under the control of the Parthians.
Mesopotamia became a battleground between the Romans and Parthians, with parts
of Mesopotamia coming under ephemeral Roman control. In AD 226, it fell to the
Sassanid Persians and remained under Persian rule until the 7th century Arab
Islamic conquest of the Sassanid Empire. A number of primarily neo-Assyrian and
Christian native Mesopotamian states existed between the 1st century BCE and 3rd
century CE, including Adiabene, Osroene, and Hatra.
Ur
History of the early world
Page 12
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
Ur was an important Sumerian city-state in ancient Mesopotamia, located at
the site of modern Tell el-Muqayya in south Iraq's Dhi Qar Governorate. Although
Ur was once a coastal city near the mouth of the Euphrates on the Persian Gulf, the
coastline has shifted and the city is now well inland, south of the Euphrates on its
right bank, 16 kilometres from Nasiriyah.
The city dates from the Ubaid period circa 3800 BC, and is recorded in written
history as a City State from the 26th century BC, its first recorded king being MeshAne-pada. The city's patron deity was Nanna (in Akkadian, Sin), the Sumerian and
Akkadian (Assyrian-Babylonian) moon god, and the name of the city is in origin
derived from the god's name, being the classical Sumerian spelling of, "the abode
(UNUG) of Nanna .
The site is marked by the partially restored ruins of the Ziggurat of Ur, which
contained the shrine of Nanna, excavated in the 1930s. The temple was built in the
21st centur, during the reign of Ur-Nammu and was reconstructed in the 6th century
BC by Nabonidus, the Assyrian born last king of Babylon. The ruins cover an area of
1,200 metres northwest to southeast by 800 metres northeast to southwest and rise
up to about 20 metres above the present plain level.
Archaeological research of the region has also contributed greatly to our
understanding of the landscape and long-distance interactions that took place
during these ancient times. We know that Ur was the most important port on the
Persian Gulf, which extended much further inland than it does today. All the wealth
which came to Mesopotamia by sea had to pass through Ur. So far evidence for the
earliest periods of the Early Bronze Age in Mesopotamia is very limited. Mesh-Anepada is the first king mentioned in the Sumerian King List, and appears to have lived
in the 26th century BC. That Ur was an important urban centre already then seems to
be indicated by a type of cylinder seal called the City Seals. These seals contain a set
of proto-cuneiform signs which appear to be writings or symbols of the name of citystates in ancient Sumer. Many of these seals have been found in Ur, and the name of
Ur is prominent on them.
Ur came under the control of the Akkadian Empire founded by Sargon the
Great between the 24th and 22nd centuries BC. This was a period when the Semitic
Akkadians of Mesopotamia gained ascendancy over the Sumerians, and indeed
much of the ancient Near East.
The third dynasty was established when the king Ur-Nammu came to power,
ruling between ca. 2047 BC and 2030 BC. During his rule, temples, including the
ziggurat, were built, and agriculture was improved through irrigation. His code of
laws, the Code of Ur-Nammu is one of the oldest such documents known, preceding
the Code of Hammurabi by 300 years. He and his successor Shulgi were both deified
during their reigns, and after his death he continued as a hero-figure: one of the
surviving works of Sumerian literature describes the death of Ur-Nammu and his
journey to the underworld. About that time, the houses in the city were two-storied
villas with 13 or 14 rooms, with plastered interior walls.
According to one estimate, Ur was the largest city in the world from c. 2030 to
1980 BC. Its population was approximately 65,000. 2011 research indicates that the
History of the early world
Page 13
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
area was struck by drought conditions from 2200 to 2000 BC. The population
dropped by 93%. Ur was sacked twice by nomads during this time. At the end of this
drought, the use of the Sumerian language died out.
Language and writing
The earliest language written in Mesopotamia was Sumerian, an agglutinative
language isolate. Along with Sumerian, Semitic languages were also spoken in early
Mesopotamia. Subartuan a language of the Zagros, perhaps related to the HurroUrartuan language family is attested in personal names, rivers and mountains and in
various crafts. Acadian came to be the dominant language during the Acadian
Empire and the Assyrian empires, but Sumerian was retained for administrative,
religious, literary and scientific purposes. Different varieties of Acadian were used
until the end of the Neo-Babylonian period. Old Aramaic, which had already
become common in Mesopotamia, then became the official provincial administration
language of first the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and then the Achaemenid Empire: the
official dialect is called Imperial Aramaic. Acadian fell into disuse, but both it and
Sumerian were still used in temples for some centuries. The last Acadian texts date
from the late 1st century AD.
Early in Mesopotamia's history (around the mid-4th millennium BC)
cuneiform was invented for the Sumerian language. Cuneiform literally means
"wedge-shaped", due to the triangular tip of the stylus used for impressing signs on
wet clay. The standardized form of each cuneiform sign appears to have been
developed from pictograms. The earliest texts (7 archaic tablets) come from the É, a
temple dedicated to the goddess Inanna at Uruk, from a building labeled as Temple
C by its excavators.
The early logographic system of cuneiform script took many years to master.
Thus, only a limited number of individuals were hired as scribes to be trained in its
use. It was not until the widespread use of a syllabic script was adopted under
Sargon's rule that significant portions of Mesopotamian population became literate.
Massive archives of texts were recovered from the archaeological contexts of Old
Babylonian scribal schools, through which literacy was disseminated.
During the third millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural
symbiosis between the Sumerian and the Akkadian language users, which included
widespread bilingualism.[15] The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian (and vice versa)
is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a massive scale, to syntactic,
morphological, and phonological convergence.[15] This has prompted scholars to
refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the third millennium as a sprachbund.[15]
Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken language of Mesopotamia
somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC (the exact dating
being a matter of debate),[16] but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred,
ceremonial, literary, and scientific language in Mesopotamia until the 1st century
AD.
Religion and philosophy
Mesopotamian religion was the first to be recorded. Mesopotamians believed
that the world was a flat surrounded by a huge, holed space, and above that, heaven.
History of the early world
Page 14
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
They also believed that water was everywhere, the top, bottom and sides, and that
the universe was born from this enormous sea. In addition, Mesopotamian religion
was polytheistic. Although the beliefs described above were held in common among
Mesopotamians, there were also regional variations. The Sumerian word for
universe is an-ki, which refers to the god an and the goddess Ki. Their son was Enlil,
the air god. They believed that Enlil was the most powerful god. He was the chief
god of the Pantheon, equivalent to the Greek god Zeus and the Roman god Jupiter.
Philosophy
Giorgio Buccellati believes that the origins of philosophy can be traced back to
early Mesopotamian wisdom, which embodied certain philosophies of life,
particularly ethics, in the forms of dialectic, dialogs, epic poetry, folklore, hymns,
lyrics, prose works, and proverbs. Babylonian reasoning and rationality developed
beyond empirical observation.
The earliest form of logic was developed by the Babylonians, notably in the
rigorous nature of their social systems. Babylonian thought was axiomatic and is
comparable to the "ordinary logic" described by John Maynard Keynes. Babylonian
thought was also based on an open-systems ontology which is compatible with
ergodic axioms. Logic was employed to some extent in Babylonian astronomy and
medicine.
Babylonian thought had a considerable influence on early Greek and
Hellenistic philosophy. In particular, the Babylonian text Dialogue of Pessimism
contains similarities to the agonistic thought of the sophists, the Heraclitean doctrine
of contrasts, and the dialectic and dialogs of Plato, as well as a precursor to the
maieutic method of Socrates.[32] The Ionian philosopher Thales was influenced by
Babylonian cosmological ideas.
Legal System
Mesopotamia created the first law codes, drawn from legal precedence and
decisions made by Kings. The codes of Urukagina and Lipit Ishtar have been found.
The most renowned of these was that of Hammurabi, as mentioned above, who was
posthumously famous for his set of laws, the Code of Hammurabi (1780 BC), which
is one of the earliest sets of laws found and one of the best preserved examples of
this type of document from ancient Mesopotamia. He codified over 200 laws for
Mesopotamia. The oldest known code is believed to have been proclaimed about
2100BCE. However, it is problematic to establish with certainty the dates of
promulgation of cuneiform texts.
Another legal system was the Laws of Lipit- Ishtar of about 1930 BCE, which deels
primarily with laws of marriage, family and property. It is almost similar to the
earlier one. The fact that even the divinities to which these two collections of laws
refer are the same is a proof of the strong and intense diffusion that was undergoing
the Mesopotamian region in all spheres of social life. The Laws of Eshnunna was
another set of laws prevailed around 1720 BCE in the city of Eshnunna, located on
the east of Tigris river. It is also not a systematic code.
The Sumerian laws can be defined neither as codification in the true sense,
nor as customary rules that had simply been collected nor written down. They
History of the early world
Page 15
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
represent certain historical and socio economic circumstances which engendered
diffusion between close but different cultures. This code contains no laws having to
do with religion. The basis of criminal law is that of equal retaliation, comparable to
the Semitic law of “an eye for an eye”.
EGYPT
Egyptian civilization of ancient North-eastern Africa, concentrated along the
lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. It is one
of six civilizations globally to arise independently. Egyptian civilization coalesced
around 3150 BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology) with the political
unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh. The history of
ancient Egypt occurred in a series of stable Kingdoms, separated by periods of
relative instability known as Intermediate Periods: the Old Kingdom of the Early
Bronze Age, the Middle Kingdom of the Middle Bronze Age and the New Kingdom
of the Late Bronze Age.
Egypt reached the pinnacle of its power during the New Kingdom, in the
Ramesside period where it rivalled the Hittite Empire, Assyrian Empire and Mitanni
Empire, after which it entered a period of slow decline. Egypt was invaded or
conquered by a succession of foreign powers, such as the Canaanites/Hyksos,
Libyans, the Nubians, the Assyrians, Babylonians, the Achaemenid Persians, and the
Macedonians in the Third Intermediate Period and the Late Period of Egypt. In the
aftermath of Alexander the Great's death, one of his generals, Ptolemy Soter,
established himself as the new ruler of Egypt. This Greek Ptolemaic Dynasty ruled
Egypt until 30 BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a
Roman province.
The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to
adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture. The predictable
flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, which
supported a more dense population, and social development and culture. With
resources to spare, the administration sponsored mineral exploitation of the valley
and surrounding desert regions, the early development of an independent writing
system, the organization of collective construction and agricultural projects, trade
with surrounding regions, and a military intended to defeat foreign enemies and
assert Egyptian dominance. Motivating and organizing these activities was a
bureaucracy of elite scribes, religious leaders, and administrators under the control
of a pharaoh, who ensured the cooperation and unity of the Egyptian people in the
context of an elaborate system of religious beliefs.
The many achievements of the ancient Egyptians include the quarrying,
surveying and construction techniques that supported the building of monumental
pyramids, temples, and obelisks; a system of mathematics, a practical and effective
system of medicine, irrigation systems and agricultural production techniques, the
first known ships, Egyptian faience and glass technology, new forms of literature,
and the earliest known peace treaty, made with the Hittites. Egypt left a lasting
legacy. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities carried off to
far corners of the world. Its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of
History of the early world
Page 16
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
travellers and writers for centuries. A new-found respect for antiquities and
excavations in the early modern period by Europeans and Egyptians led to the
scientific investigation of Egyptian civilization and a greater appreciation of its
cultural legacy.
Egyptian religion was a complex system of polytheistic beliefs and rituals
which were an integral part of ancient Egyptian society. It cantered on the Egyptians'
interaction with many deities who were believed to be present in, and in control of,
the forces and elements of nature. The practices of Egyptian religion were efforts to
provide for the gods and gain their favour. Formal religious practice centred on the
pharaoh, the king of Egypt. Although a human, the Pharaoh was believed to be
descended from the gods. He acted as the intermediary between his people and the
gods, and was obligated to sustain the gods through rituals and offerings so that
they could maintain order in the universe. The state dedicated enormous resources
to Egyptian rituals and to the construction of the temples.
Individuals could interact with the gods for their own purposes, appealing for
their help through prayer or compelling them to act through magic. These practices
were distinct from, but closely linked with, the formal rituals and institutions. The
popular religious tradition grew more prominent in the course of Egyptian history
as the status of the Pharaoh declined. Another important aspect was the belief in the
afterlife and funerary practices. The Egyptians made great efforts to ensure the
survival of their souls after death, providing tombs, grave goods, and offerings to
preserve the bodies and spirits of the deceased.
The religion had its roots in Egypt's prehistory and lasted for more than 3,000
years. The details of religious belief changed over time as the importance of
particular gods rose and declined, and their intricate relationships shifted. At
various times, certain gods became preeminent over the others, including the sun
god Ra, the creator god Amun, and the mother goddess Isis. For a brief period, in the
aberrant theology promulgated by the Pharaoh Akhenaten, a single god, the Aten,
replaced the traditional pantheon. Ancient Egyptian religion and mythology left
behind many writings and monuments, along with significant influences on ancient
and modern cultures.
Egyptian language
The Egyptian language is a northern Afro-Asiatic language closely related to
the Berber and Semitic languages. It has the second longest history of any language
(after Sumerian), having been written from c. 3200 BC to the Middle Ages and
remaining as a spoken language for longer. The phases of ancient Egyptian are Old
Egyptian, Middle Egyptian (Classical Egyptian), Late Egyptian, Demotic and Coptic.
Egyptian writings do not show dialect differences before Coptic, but it was probably
spoken in regional dialects around Memphis and later Thebes.
Ancient Egyptian was a synthetic language, but it became more analytic later
on. Late Egyptian develops pre-fixal definite and indefinite articles, which replace
the older inflectional suffixes. The Egyptian hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic
scripts were eventually replaced by the more phonetic Coptic alphabet. Coptic is still
used in the liturgy of the Egyptian Orthodox Church.,
History of the early world
Page 17
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
Hieroglyphic writing dates from c. 3000 BC, and is composed of hundreds of
symbols. A hieroglyph can represent a word, a sound, or a silent determinative; and
the same symbol can serve different purposes in different contexts. Hieroglyphs
were a formal script, used on stone monuments and in tombs, that could be as
detailed as individual works of art. In day-to-day writing, scribes used a cursive
form of writing, called hieratic, which was quicker and easier. While formal
hieroglyphs may be read in rows or columns in either direction (though typically
written from right to left), hieratic was always written from right to left, usually in
horizontal rows. A new form of writing, Demotic, became the prevalent writing
style, and it is this form of writing—along with formal hieroglyphs—that accompany
the Greek text on the Rosetta Stone.
Around the first century AD, the Coptic alphabet started to be used alongside
the Demotic script. Coptic is a modified Greek alphabet with the addition of some
Demotic signs. Although formal hieroglyphs were used in a ceremonial role until the
fourth century, towards the end only a small handful of priests could still read them.
As the traditional religious establishments were disbanded, knowledge of
hieroglyphic writing was mostly lost. Attempts to decipher them date to the
Byzantine and Islamic periods in Egypt, but only in 1822, after the discovery of the
Rosetta stone and years of research by Thomas Young and Jean-François
Champollion, were hieroglyphs almost fully deciphered.
Trade and Exchange System
The ancient Egyptians engaged in trade with their foreign neighbors to obtain
rare, exotic goods not found in Egypt. In the Predynastic Period, they established
trade with Nubia to obtain gold and incense. They also established trade with
Palestine, as evidenced by Palestinian-style oil jugs found in the burials of the First
Dynasty pharaohs. An Egyptian colony stationed in southern Canaan dates to
slightly before the First Dynasty. Narmer had Egyptian pottery produced in Canaan
and exported back to Egypt.
By the Second Dynasty at latest, ancient Egyptian trade with Byblos yielded a
critical source of quality timber not found in Egypt. By the Fifth Dynasty, trade with
Punt provided gold, aromatic resins, ebony, ivory, and wild animals such as
monkeys and baboons. Egypt relied on trade with Anatolia for essential quantities of
tin as well as supplementary supplies of copper, both metals being necessary for the
manufacture of bronze. The ancient Egyptians prized the blue stone lapis lazuli,
which had to be imported from far-away Afghanistan. Egypt's Mediterranean trade
partners also included Greece and Crete, which provided, among other goods,
supplies of olive oil.] In exchange for its luxury imports and raw materials, Egypt
mainly exported grain, gold, linen, and papyrus, in addition to other finished goods
including glass and stone objects.
Legal system
The head of the legal system was officially the pharaoh, who was responsible
for enacting laws, delivering justice, and maintaining law and order, a concept the
ancient Egyptians referred to as Ma'at. Although no legal codes from ancient Egypt
survive, court documents show that Egyptian law was based on a common-sense
History of the early world
Page 18
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
view of right and wrong that emphasized reaching agreements and resolving
conflicts rather than strictly adhering to a complicated set of statutes. Local councils
of elders, known as Kenbet in the New Kingdom, were responsible for ruling in court
cases involving small claims and minor disputes. More serious cases involving
murder, major land transactions, and tomb robbery were referred to the Great Kenbet,
over which the vizier or pharaoh presided. Plaintiffs and defendants were expected
to represent themselves and were required to swear an oath that they had told the
truth. In some cases, the state took on both the role of prosecutor and judge, and it
could torture the accused with beatings to obtain a confession and the names of any
co-conspirators. Whether the charges were trivial or serious, court scribes
documented the complaint, testimony, and verdict of the case for future reference.
Punishment for minor crimes involved either imposition of fines, beatings,
facial mutilation, or exile, depending on the severity of the offense. Serious crimes
such as murder and tomb robbery were punished by execution, carried out by
decapitation, drowning, or impaling the criminal on a stake. Punishment could also
be extended to the criminal's family. Beginning in the New Kingdom, oracles played
a major role in the legal system, dispensing justice in both civil and criminal cases.
The procedure was to ask the god a "yes" or "no" question concerning the right or
wrong of an issue. The god, carried by a number of priests, rendered judgment by
choosing one or the other, moving forward or backward, or pointing to one of the
answers written on a piece of papyrus or an ostracon.
Memphis
Memphis was the ancient capital of Aneb-Hetch, the first name of Lower
Egypt. Its ruins are located near the town of Mit Rahina, 20 km south of Cairo.
According to legend related by Manetho, the city was founded by the pharaoh
Menes. Capital of Egypt during the Old Kingdom, it remained an important city
throughout ancient Mediterranean history It occupied a strategic position at the
mouth of the Nile delta, and was home to feverish activity. Its principal port, Perunefer, harboured a high density of workshops, factories, and warehouses that
distributed food and merchandise throughout the ancient kingdom. During its
golden age, Memphis thrived as a regional centre for commerce, trade, and religion.
Memphis was believed to be under the protection of the god Ptah, the patron
of craftsmen. Its great temple, Hut-ka-Ptah, was one of the most prominent structures
in the city. The name of this temple, rendered in Greek by the historian Manetho, is
believed to be the etymological origin of the modern English name Egypt.
The history of Memphis is closely linked to that of the country itself. Its
eventual downfall is believed to be due to the loss of its economic significance in late
antiquity, following the rise of coastal Alexandria. Its religious significance also
diminished after the abandonment of the ancient religion following the Edict of
Thessalonica.
The ruins of the former capital today offer fragmented evidence of its past.
They have been preserved, along with the pyramid complex at Giza, as a World
Heritage Site since 1979. The site is open to the public as an open-air museum.
Memphis became the capital of Ancient Egypt for over eight consecutive dynasties
History of the early world
Page 19
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
during the Old Kingdom. The city reached a peak of prestige under the 6th dynasty
as a centre for the worship of Ptah, the god of creation and artworks. The alabaster
sphinx that guards the Temple of Ptah serves as a memorial of the city's former
power and prestige. The Memphis triad, consisting of the creator god Ptah, his
consort Sekhmet, and their son Nefertem, formed the main focus of worship in the
city.
Memphis declined briefly after the 18th dynasty with the rise of Thebes and
the New Kingdom, and was revived under the Persians before falling firmly into
second place following the foundation of Alexandria. Under the Roman Empire,
Alexandria remained the most important Egyptian city. Memphis remained the
second city of Egypt until the establishment of Fustat (or Fostat) in 641 CE. It was
then largely abandoned and became a source of stone for the surrounding
settlements. It was still an imposing set of ruins in the 12th century but soon became
a little more than an expanse of low ruins and scattered stone.
History of the early world
Page 20
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
MODULE III
IRON AGE CIVILIZATIONS
The Iron Age is the third principal period of the three age system created by
Christian Thomsen (1788-1865) for classifying ancient societies and pre historic
stages of progress. Iron is harder than copper and bronze and is available in plenty.
The use of iron helped to produce a vast variety of tools, implements, and weapons.
Plough-share, sickles, shovels, spades, axes, etc. Favoured cleaning of jungles on a
large scale and thereby making more land for cultivation. The beginning of the Iron
Age in Europe and adjacent areas is characterized by certain forms of implements,
weapons, personal ornaments, and pottery, and also by systems of decorative
design, which are altogether different from those of the preceding age of bronze.
Metalsmithing expanded from the primary form in the Bronze Age, casting, to
include forging. The system of decoration, which in the Bronze Age consisted chiefly
of a repetition of rectilinear patterns, gave way to a system of curvilinear and
flowing designs. The term "Iron Age" has low chronological value, because it did not
begin simultaneously across the entire world. The dates and context vary depending
on the region, and the sequence of ages is not necessarily true for every part of the
earth's surface. There are areas, such as the islands of the South Pacific, the interior
of Africa, and parts of North and South America, where peoples have passed
directly from the use of stone to the use of iron without an intervening age of bronze.
\
The term Iron Age has less Chronological value because it did not begin
simultaneously across the entire world. The advent Iron Age in Mesopotamia is
dated around 1300BCE, in India and Europe around 1200BCEand in China much
later. The discovery and growth of civilization and its spread to many new arias of
the world. The ancient European civilizations, Hellenic and Hellenistic civilizations
together with Roman civilisations did make a deep impact on the pattern of future
European culture.
These civilizations mark mans continuing progress. Although each
civilization was different from the other, they all contributed to the world’s heritage
in art, literature, philosophy, science and government. The greatest achievement of
the early Iron Age civilizations was in the cultural field. Because of their cultural
achievements, these civilizations are directly linked with the entire course of human
history.
Hellenic Civilization
Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that
lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity.
Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and
the Byzantine era. Included in ancient Greece is the period of Classical Greece, which
flourished during the 5th to 4th centuries BC. Classical Greece began with the
repelling of a Persian invasion by Athenian leadership. Because of conquests by
Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central
Asia to the western end of the Mediterranean Sea. The different groups of migrants
History of the early world
Page 21
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
to Greece like the Achaeans, Ionians, and Dorians, who spoke the Indo-European
language, together called themselves ‘hellenes’, which means Greeks.
Classical Greek culture, especially philosophy, had a powerful influence on
the Roman Empire, which carried a version of it to many parts of the Mediterranean
Basin and Europe, for which reason Classical Greece is generally considered to be
the seminal culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture.
Classical Antiquity in Greece is preceded by the Greek Dark Ages (c. 1200 – c.
800 BC), archaeologically characterised by the proto-geometric and geometric styles
of designs on pottery. This period is succeeded, around the 8th century BC, by the
Orientalising Period during which a strong influence of Syro-Hittite, Assyrian,
Phoenician and Egyptian cultures becomes apparent. Traditionally, the Archaic
period of ancient Greece is considered to begin with Orientalising influence, which
among other things brought the alphabetic script to Greece, marking the beginning
of Greek literature (Homer, Hesiod). The end of the Dark Ages is also frequently
dated to 776 BC, the year of the first Olympic Games. The Archaic period gives way
to the Classical period around 500 BC, in turn succeeded by the Hellenistic period at
the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC.
Athens
In Ancient Greek, Athens' name was a plural. However, in earlier Greek, such
as Homeric Greek, the name was in the singular form, and was then rendered in the
plural. The root of the word is probably not of Greek or Indo-European origin, and is
a possible remnant of the Pre-Greek substrate of Attica, as with the name of the
goddess Athena , who was always related to the city of Athens.
An etiological myth explaining how Athens has acquired this name was well
known among ancient Athenians and even became the theme of the sculpture on the
West pediment of the Parthenon. The goddess Athena and the god Poseidon had
many disagreements and battles between them, and one of these was a race to be the
Patron God of the city. In an attempt to compel the people, Poseidon created a salt
water spring by striking the ground with his trident, symbolizing naval power.
However, when Athena created the olive tree, symbolizing peace and prosperity, the
Athenians, under their ruler Cecrops, accepted the olive tree and named the city
after Athena.
The oldest known human presence in Athens is the Cave of Schist, which has
been dated to between the 11th and 7th millennium BC. Athens has been
continuously inhabited for at least 7000 years. By 1400 BC the settlement had become
an important centre of the Mycenaean civilization and the Acropolis was the site of a
major Mycenaean fortress, whose remains can be recognised from sections of the
characteristic Cyclopean walls. Unlike other Mycenaean centres, such as Mycenae
and Pylos, it is not known whether Athens suffered destruction in about 1200 BC, an
event often attributed to a Dorian invasion, and the Athenians always maintained
that they were "pure" Ionians with no Dorian element. However, Athens, like many
other Bronze Age settlements, went into economic decline for around 150 years
afterwards.
History of the early world
Page 22
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
Iron Age burials, in the Kerameikos and other locations, are often richly provided for
and demonstrate that from 900 BC onwards Athens was one of the leading centres of
trade and prosperity in the region. The leading position of Athens may well have
resulted from its central location in the Greek world, its secure stronghold on the
Acropolis and its access to the sea, which gave it a natural advantage over inland
rivals such as Thebes and Sparta.
By the 6th century BC, widespread social unrest led to the reforms of Solon.
These would pave the way for the eventual introduction of democracy by
Cleisthenes in 508 BC. Athens had by this time become a significant naval power
with a large fleet, and helped the rebellion of the Ionian cities against Persian rule. In
the ensuing Greco-Persian Wars Athens, together with Sparta, led the coalition of
Greek states that would eventually repel the Persians, defeating them decisively at
Marathon in 490 BC, and crucially at Salamis in 480 BC. However, this did not
prevent Athens from being captured and sacked twice by the Persians within one
year, after a heroic resistance at Thermopylae by Spartans and other Greeks led by
King Leonidas, after both Boeotia and Attica fell to the Persians.
The decades that followed became known as the Golden Age of Athenian
democracy, during the time of Pericles 594BCE.He gave membership to all
Athenians in the popular assembly called ‘Ecclesia’. Administration was based on
the majority decisions of the Ecclesia. An administrative council of ten members was
in charge of the day-to-day administration of the state. Pericles was the head of the
council. The weakness of Athenian Democracy was women and slaves were not
given membership to the Ecclesia.
Athens became the leading city of Ancient Greece, with its cultural
achievements laying the foundations of Western civilization. The playwrights
Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides flourished in Athens during this time, as did the
historians Herodotus and Thucydides, the physician Hippocrates, and the
philosopher Socrates. Guided by Pericles, who promoted the arts and fostered
democracy, Athens embarked on an ambitious building program that saw the
construction of the Acropolis of Athens (including the Parthenon), as well as empirebuilding via the Delian League. Originally intended as an association of Greek citystates to continue the fight against the Persians, the league soon turned into a vehicle
for Athens's own imperial ambitions. The resulting tensions brought about the
Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), in which Athens was defeated by its rival Sparta.
By the mid-4th century BC, the northern Greek kingdom of Macedon was
becoming dominant in Athenian affairs. In 338 BC the armies of Philip II defeated an
alliance of some of the Greek city-states including Athens and Thebes at the Battle of
Chaeronea, effectively ending Athenian independence. Later, under Rome, Athens
was given the status of a free city because of its widely admired schools. The Roman
emperor Hadrian, in the 2nd century AD, constructed a library, a gymnasium, an
aqueduct which is still in use, several temples and sanctuaries, a bridge and financed
the completion of the Temple of Olympian Zeus.
By the end of Late Antiquity, the city experienced decline followed by
recovery in the second half of the Middle Byzantine Period, in the 9th to 10th
History of the early world
Page 23
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
centuries AD, and was relatively prosperous during the Crusades, benefiting from
Italian trade. After the Fourth Crusade the Duchy of Athens was established. In 1458
it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and entered a long period of decline.
Following the Greek War of Independence and the establishment of the Greek
Kingdom, Athens was chosen as the capital of the newly independent Greek state in
1834, largely due to historical and sentimental reasons. At the time it was a town of
modest size built around the foot of the Acropolis. The first King of Greece, Otto of
Bavaria, commissioned the architects Stamatios Kleanthis and Eduard Schaubert to
design a modern city plan fit for the capital of a state.
Sparta
Sparta was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of
the Eurotas River in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political
entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local,
non-Dorian population. Around 650 BC, it rose to become the dominant military
land-power in ancient Greece.
Given its military pre-eminence, Sparta was recognized as the overall leader
of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars. Between 431 and 404
BC, Sparta was the principal enemy of Athens during the Peloponnesian War, from
which it emerged victorious, though at great cost of lives lost. Sparta's defeat by
Thebes in the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC ended Sparta's prominent role in Greece.
However, it maintained its political independence until the Roman conquest of
Greece in 146 BC. It then underwent a long period of decline, especially in the
middle ages, when many Spartans moved to live in Mystras. Modern Sparta is the
capital of the Greek regional unit of Laconia and a centre for the processing of goods
such as citrus and olives.
Sparta was unique in ancient Greece for its social system and constitution,
which completely focused on military training and excellence. Its inhabitants were
classified as Spartiates (Spartan citizens, who enjoyed full rights), Mothakes (nonSpartan free men raised as Spartans), Perioikoi (freedmen), and Helots (state-owned
serfs, enslaved non-Spartan local population). Spartiates underwent the rigorous
military training and education regimen, and Spartan phalanges were widely
considered to be among the best in battle. Spartan women enjoyed considerably
more rights and equality to men than elsewhere in the classical world.
Sparta was the subject of fascination in its own day, as well as in the West
following the revival of classical learning. This love or admiration of Sparta is known
as Laconism or Laconophilia. At its peak around 500 BC the size of the city would
have been some 20,000 – 35,000 free residents, plus numerous helots and perioiko. At
40,000 – 50,000 it was one of the largest Greek cities; however, according to
Thucydides, the population of Athens in 431 BC was 360,000 – 610,000, making it
unlikely that Athens was smaller than Sparta in 5th century BC.
Sparta was an Oligarchy. The state was ruled by two hereditary kings of the
Agiad and Eurypontid families, both supposedly descendants of Heracles and equal
in authority, so that one could not act against the power and political enactments of
his colleague.
History of the early world
Page 24
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
The duties of the kings were primarily religious, judicial, and military. They
were the chief priests of the state and also maintained communication with the
Delphian sanctuary, which always exercised great authority in Spartan politics. In
the time of Herodotus, about 450 BC, their judicial functions had been restricted to
cases dealing with heiresses, adoptions and the public roads. Aristotle describes the
kingship at Sparta as "a kind of unlimited and perpetual generalship" while Isocrates
refers to the Spartans as "subject to an oligarchy at home, to a kingship on campaign"
Civil and criminal cases were decided by a group of officials known as the ephors, as
well as a council of elders known as the Gerousia. The Gerousia consisted of 28
elders over the age of 60, elected for life and usually part of the royal households,
and the two kings. High state policy decisions were discussed by this council who
could then propose action alternatives to the Damos, the collective body of Spartan
citizenry, who would select one of the alternatives by voting.
The royal prerogatives were curtailed over time. Dating from the period of
the Persian wars, the king lost the right to declare war and was accompanied in the
field by two ephors. He was supplanted also by the ephors in the control of foreign
policy. Over time, the kings became mere figureheads except in their capacity as
generals. Real power was transferred to the ephors and to the Gerousia.
The origins of the powers exercised by the assembly of the citizens are
virtually unknown because of the lack of historical documentation and Spartan state
secrecy.
Citizenship
Not all inhabitants of the Spartan state were considered to be citizens. Only
those who had undertaken the Spartan education process known as the agoge were
eligible. However, usually the only people eligible to receive the agoge were
Spartiates, or people who could trace their ancestry to the original inhabitants of the
city.
There were two exceptions. Trophimoi or "foster sons" were foreign students
invited to study. The Athenian general Xenophon, for example, sent his two sons to
Sparta as trophimoi. The other exception was that the son of a helot could be
enrolled as a syntrophos if a Spartiate formally adopted him and paid his way. If a
syntrophos did exceptionally well in training, he might be sponsored to become a
Spartiate.
Others in the state were the perioikoi, who were free inhabitants of Spartan
territory but were non-citizens, and the helots, the state-owned serfs. Descendants of
non-Spartan citizens were not able to follow the agog and Spartans who could not
afford to pay the expenses of the agog could lose their citizenship. These laws meant
that Sparta could not readily replace citizens lost in battle or otherwise and
eventually proved near fatal to the continuance of the state as the number of citizens
became greatly outnumbered by the non-citizens and, even more dangerously, the
helots.
The Greek city states were gradually dragged into a mutual suicidal war in
the later part of the 5 th century BCE the Peloponnesian war which turned out to be
the death-knell of the Greek city states. It was the end of the ‘glory that was Greece’.
History of the early world
Page 25
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
Hellenic Culture-Legacies
The Hellenic culture characterised as the ‘classical’ or simply the great. Greek
cultural contribution reached its height in the Persian Athens. As the large number
of slaves was the actual producers of the society, the Greek citizens had ample time
to spend for cultural activities their orientation towards life was based upon reason,
beauty, and truth and they are manifested with their cultural contributions. They
were rooted in the past but were pointed towards the future.
Philosophy
Greek Philosophy arose in the 6th century BCE and continued throughout the
Hellenistic period and the period in which Ancient Greece was part of the Roman
Empire. It dealt with a wide variety of subjects, including political philosophy,
ethics, metaphysics, ontology, logic, biology, rhetoric, and aesthetics.
Many philosophers today concede that Greek philosophy has influenced
much of Western thought since its inception. Alfred North Whitehead once noted:
"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it
consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." Clear, unbroken lines of influence lead from
ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers to Early Islamic philosophy, the
European Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment.
Some claim that Greek philosophy, in turn, was influenced by the older
wisdom literature and mythological cosmogonies of the ancient Near East. Martin
Litchfield West gives qualified assent to this view, stating, "contact with oriental
cosmology and theology helped to liberate the early Greek philosophers'
imagination; it certainly gave them many suggestive ideas. But they taught
themselves to reason. Philosophy as we understand it is a Greek creation."
The Sophists
The first man to call himself a sophist, according to Plato, was Protagoras,
whom he presents as teaching that all virtue is conventional. It was Protagoras who
claimed that "man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are,
and of the things that are not, that they are not," which Plato interprets as a radical
perspectives, where some things seem to be one way for one person (and so actually
are that way) and another way for another person (and so actually are that way as
well); the conclusion being that one cannot look to nature for guidance regarding
how to live one's life.
Protagoras and subsequent sophists tended to teach rhetoric as their primary
vocation. Prodicus, Gorgias, Hippias, and Thrasymachus appear in various
Dialogues, sometimes explicitly teaching that while nature provides no ethical
guidance, the guidance that the laws provide is worthless, or that nature favours
those who act against the laws
Socrates
Socrates, born in Athens in the 5th century BCE, marks a watershed in ancient
Greek philosophy. Athens was a centre of learning, with sophists and philosophers
travelling from across Greece to teach rhetoric, astronomy, cosmology, geometry,
and the like. The great statesman Pericles was closely associated with this new
History of the early world
Page 26
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
learning and a friend of Anaxagoras, however, and his political opponents struck at
him by taking advantage of a conservative reaction against the philosophers; it
became a crime to investigate the things above the heavens or below the earth,
subjects considered impious. Anaxagoras is said to have been charged and to have
fled into exile when Socrates was about twenty years of age. There is a story that
Protagoras, too, was forced to flee and that the Athenians burned his books.
Socrates, however, is the only subject recorded as charged under this law, convicted,
and sentenced to death in 399 BCE. In the version of his defence speech presented by
Plato, he claims that it is the envy he arouses on account of his being a philosopher
that will convict him.
While philosophy was an established pursuit prior to Socrates, Cicero credits
him as "the first who brought philosophy down from the heavens, placed it in cities,
introduced it into families, and obliged it to examine into life and morals, and good
and evil." By this account he would be considered the founder of political
philosophy. The reasons for this turn toward political and ethical subjects remain the
object of much study.
The fact that many conversations involving Socrates (as recounted by Plato
and Xenophon) end without having reached a firm conclusion, or aporetically, has
stimulated debate over the meaning of the Socratic Method. Socrates is said to have
pursued this probing question-and-answer style of examination on a number of
topics, usually attempting to arrive at a defensible and attractive definition of a
virtue.
While Socrates' recorded conversations rarely provide a definite answer to the
question under examination, several maxims or paradoxes for which he has become
known recur. Socrates taught that no one desires what is bad, and so if anyone does
something that truly is bad, it must be unwillingly or out of ignorance; consequently,
all virtue is knowledge. He frequently remarks on his own ignorance. Plato presents
him as distinguishing himself from the common run of mankind by the fact that,
while they know nothing noble and good, they do not know that they do not know,
whereas Socrates knows and acknowledges that he knows nothing noble and good.
Numerous subsequent philosophical movements were inspired by Socrates or
his younger associates. Plato casts Socrates as the main interlocutor in his dialogues,
deriving from them the basis of Platonism. Plato's student Aristotle in turn criticized
and built upon the doctrines he ascribed to Socrates and Plato, forming the
foundation of Aristotelianism. Antisthenes founded the school that would come to
be known as Cynicism and accused Plato of distorting Socrates' teachings. Zeno of
Citium in turn adapted the ethics of Cynicism to articulate Stoicism. Epicurus
studied with Platonic and Stoic teachers before renouncing all previous philosophers
(including Democritus, on whose atomism the Epicurean philosophy relies). The
philosophic movements that were to dominate the intellectual life of the Roman
Empire were thus born in this febrile period following Socrates' activity, and either
directly or indirectly influenced by him. They were also absorbed by the expanding
Muslim world in the 7th through 10th centuries CE, from which they returned to the
History of the early world
Page 27
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
West as foundations of medieval philosophy and the Renaissance, as discussed
below.
Plato
Plato was an Athenian of the generation after Socrates. Ancient tradition
ascribes thirty-six dialogues and thirteen letters to him, although of these only
twenty-four of the dialogues are now universally recognized as authentic; most
modern scholars believe that at least twenty-eight dialogues and two of the letters
were in fact written by Plato, although all of the thirty-six dialogues have some
defenders. A further nine dialogues are ascribed to Plato but were considered
spurious even in antiquity.
Plato's dialogues feature Socrates, although not always as the leader of the
conversation. (One dialogue, the Laws, instead contains an "Athenian Stranger.")
Along with Xenophon, Plato is the primary source of information about Socrates' life
and beliefs and it is not always easy to distinguish between the two. While the
Socrates presented in the dialogues is often taken to be Plato's mouthpiece, Socrates'
reputation for irony, his caginess regarding his own opinions in the dialogues, and
his occasional absence from or minor role in the conversation serve to conceal Plato's
doctrines. Much of what is said about his doctrines is derived from what Aristotle
reports about them.
The political doctrine ascribed to Plato is derived from the Republic, the Laws,
and the Statesman. The first of these contains the suggestion that there will not be
justice in cities unless they are ruled by philosopher kings; those responsible for
enforcing the laws are compelled to hold their women, children, and property in
common; and the individual is taught to pursue the common good through noble
lies; the Republic says that such a city is likely impossible, however, generally
assuming that philosophers would refuse to rule and the people would refuse to
compel them to do so.
Whereas the Republic is premised on a distinction between the sort of
knowledge possessed by the philosopher and that possessed by the king or political
man, Socrates explores only the character of the philosopher; in the Statesman, on the
other hand, a participant referred to as the Eleatic Stranger discusses the sort of
knowledge possessed by the political man, while Socrates listens quietly. Although
rule by a wise man would be preferable to rule by law, the wise cannot help but be
judged by the unwise, and so in practice, rule by law is deemed necessary.
Both the Republic and the Statesman reveal the limitations of politics, raising
the question of what political order would be best given those constraints; that
question is addressed in the Laws, a dialogue that does not take place in Athens and
from which Socrates is absent. The character of the society described there is
eminently conservative, a corrected or liberalized timocracy on the Spartan or Cretan
model or that of pre-democratic Athens.
Plato's dialogues also have metaphysical themes, the most famous of which is
his theory of forms. It holds that non-material abstract (but substantial) forms (or
ideas), and not the material world of change known to us through our physical
senses, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality.
History of the early world
Page 28
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
Plato often uses long-form analogies (usually allegories) to explain his ideas;
the most famous is perhaps the Allegory of the Cave. It likens most humans to
people tied up in a cave, who look only at shadows on the walls and have no other
conception of reality. If they turned around, they would see what is casting the
shadows (and thereby gain a further dimension to their reality). If some left the cave,
they would see the outside world illuminated by the sun (representing the ultimate
form of goodness and truth). If these travellers then re-entered the cave, the people
inside (who are still only familiar with the shadows) would not be equipped to
believe reports of this 'outside world'. This story explains the theory of forms with
their different levels of reality, and advances the view that philosopher-kings are
wisest while most humans are ignorant. One student of Plato (who would become
another of the most influential philosophers of all time) stressed the implication that
understanding relies upon first-hand observation:
Aristotle
Aristotle moved to Athens from his native Stageira in 367 BCE and began to
study philosophy (perhaps even rhetoric, under Isocrates), eventually enrolling at
Plato's Academy. He left Athens approximately twenty years later to study botany
and zoology, became a tutor of Alexander the Great, and ultimately returned to
Athens a decade later to establish his own school: the Lyceum. At least twenty-nine
of his treatises have survived, known as the corpus Aristotelicum, and address a
variety of subjects including logic, physics, optics, metaphysics, ethics, rhetoric,
politics, poetry, botany, and zoology.
Aristotle is often portrayed as disagreeing with his teacher Plato. He criticizes
the regimes described in Plato's Republic and Laws, and refers to the theory of forms
as "empty words and poetic metaphors." He is generally presented as giving greater
weight to empirical observation and practical concerns.
Aristotle's fame was not great during the Hellenistic period, when Stoic logic
was in vogue, but later peripatetic commentators popularized his work, which
eventually contributed heavily to Islamic, Jewish, and medieval Christian
philosophy. His influence was such that Avicenna referred to him simply as "the
Master"; Maimonides, Alfarabi, Averroes, and Aquinas as "the Philosopher."
Religion
Hellenic religion was a polytheists worship the ancient Greek Gods, including
the Olympians, nature divinities, underworld deities (chthonic gods) and heroes.
Both physical and spiritual ancestors are honoured. It is primarily a devotional or
votive religion, based on the exchange of gifts (offerings) for the gods' blessings. The
ethical convictions of modern Hellenic polytheists are often inspired by ancient
Greek virtues such as reciprocity, hospitality, self-control and moderation. The
Delphic maxims, Tenets of Solon, the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, or even
Aristotle's Ethics each function as complete moral codes that a Hellenic Polytheist
may observe. Key to most ethical systems is the idea of kharis (or "charis", grace), to
establish reciprocity between humanity and the gods, between individuals, and
among community members. Another key value in Hellenic Polytheism is eusebeia,
History of the early world
Page 29
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
often translated as piety. This implies a commitment to the worship of the Hellenic
gods and action to back this up.
There is no central "ecclesia" (church/assembly) or hierarchal clergy, though some
groups (i.e., Hellenion) do offer training in that capacity. Individual worshipers are
generally expected to perform their own rituals and learn about the religion and the
gods by reference to primary and secondary sources on ancient Greek religion and
through personal experience of the gods. Information gained from such personal
experiences is often referred to in Hellenic groups as "UPG" (Unverified Personal
Gnosis), a term borrowed from Ásatrú. encompasses the collection of beliefs, rituals,
and mythology originating in ancient Greece in the form of both popular public
religion and cult practices. These different groups varied enough for it to be possible
to speak of Greek religions or "cults" in the plural, though most of them shared
similarities.
Many of the ancient Greek people recognized the major (Olympian) gods and
goddesses (Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Ares, Dionysus,
Hephaestus, Athena, Hermes, Demeter, Hestia, and Hera ), although philosophies
such as Stoicism and some forms of Platonism used language that seems to posit a
transcendent single deity. Different cities often worshiped the same deities,
sometimes with epithets that distinguished them and specified their local nature.
The religious practices of the Greeks extended beyond mainland Greece, to
the islands and coasts of Ionia in Asia Minor, to Magna Graecia (Sicily and southern
Italy), and to scattered Greek colonies in the Western Mediterranean, such as
Massalia (Marseille). Greek religion was tempered by Etruscan cult and belief to
form much of the later Ancient Roman religion.
Ancient Greek theology was polytheistic, based on the assumption that there
were many gods and goddesses. There was a hierarchy of deities, with Zeus, the
king of the gods, having a level of control over all the others, although he was not
omnipotent. Some deities had dominion over certain aspects of nature. For instance,
Zeus was the sky-god, sending thunder and lightning, Poseidon ruled over the sea
and earthquakes, Hades projected his remarkable power throughout the realms of
death and the Underworld, and Helios controlled the sun. Other deities ruled over
an abstract concept; for instance Aphrodite controlled love.
While being immortal, the gods were certainly not all-good or even allpowerful. They had to obey fate, which overrode any of their divine powers or wills.
For instance, in mythology, it was Odysseus' fate to return home to Ithaca after the
Trojan War, and the gods could only lengthen his journey and make it harder for
him, but they could not stop him.
The gods acted like humans, and had human vices. They would interact with
humans, sometimes even spawning children with them. At times certain gods would
be opposed to others, and they would try to outdo each other. In the Iliad Zeus,
Aphrodite, Ares and Apollo support the Trojan side in the Trojan War, while Hera,
Athena and Poseidon support the Greeks . Some gods were specifically associated
with a certain city. Athena was associated with the city of Athens, Apollo with
Delphi and Delos, Zeus with Olympia and Aphrodite with Corinth. Other deities
History of the early world
Page 30
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
were associated with nations outside of Greece; Poseidon was associated with
Ethiopia and Troy, and Ares with Thrace.
Identity of names was not a guarantee of a similar cults; the Greeks
themselves were well aware that the Artemis worshipped at Sparta, the virgin
huntress, was a very different deity from the Artemis who was a many-breasted
fertility goddess at Ephesus. When literary works such as the Iliad related conflicts
among the gods these conflicts were because their followers were at war on earth
and were a celestial reflection of the earthly pattern of local deities. Though the
worship of the major deities spread from one locality to another, and though larger
cities boasted temples to several major gods, the identification of different gods with
different places remained strong to the end.
The Greeks believed in an afterlife where the spirits of the dead went after
death. It was commonly supposed that unless the proper funeral rituals were
performed, the deceased person's spirit would never reach the underworld and so
would haunt the upper world as a ghost forever. There were various views of the
underworld, and the idea changed over time. A few, like Achilles, Alcmene,
Amphiaraus Ganymede, Ino, Melicertes, Menelaus, Peleus, and a great number of
those who fought in the Trojan and Theban wars, were considered to have been
physically immortalized and brought to live forever in either Elysium, the Islands of
the Blessed, heaven, the ocean, or literally right under the ground. Such beliefs are
found in the most ancient Greek sources, such as Homer and Hesiod. This belief held
strong even into the Christian era. For most people at the moment of death there
was, however, no hope of anything but continued existence as a disembodied soul.
Greek religion had an extensive mythology. It consisted largely of stories of
the gods and of how they affected humans on Earth. Myths often revolved around
heroes and their actions, such as Heracles and his twelve labors, Odysseus and his
voyage home etc. Various religious festivals were held in ancient Greece. Many were
specific only to a particular deity or city-state. For example, the festival of Lycaea
was celebrated in Arcadia in Greece, which was dedicated to the pastoral god Pan.
There were also the Games held each year in different locations, culminating in the
Olympic Games, which were held every 4 years. These celebrated Zeus.
Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and
Pindar's Odes are included as sacred texts as are other works of classical antiquity.
These are the core texts that were considered inspired and usually include an
invocation to the Muses for inspiration at the beginning of the work. Such texts,
however, were not considered inspired in the sense that they had to be believed by
everyone. Plato even wanted to exclude the myths from his ideal state described in
the Republic because of their low moral tone.
Literature
This period of Greek literature stretches from Homer until the 4th century BC
and the rise of Alexander the Great. Greek literature was divided in well-defined
literary genres, each one having a compulsory formal structure, about both dialect
and metrics. The first division was between prose and poetry. Fictional literature
was written in verse, while scientific literature was in prose. Within the poetry we
History of the early world
Page 31
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
could separate three super-genres: epic, lyric and drama. We can observe here that
the Greek terminology has become the common European terminology about
literary genres. Lyric and drama were further divided into more genres: lyric in four
(elegiac, iambic, monadic lyric and choral lyric); drama in three (tragedy, comedy
and pastoral drama). About literature in prose there was more freedom; the main
areas were historiography, philosophy and political rhetoric.
At the beginning of Greek literature stand the two monumental works of
Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The figure of Homer is shrouded in mystery.
Although the works as they now stand are credited to him, it is certain that their
roots reach far back before his time (see Homeric Question). The Iliad is the famous
story about the Trojan War. It centers on the person of Achilles, who embodied the
Greek heroic ideal.
While the Iliad is pure tragedy, the Odyssey is a mixture of tragedy and
comedy. It is the story of Odysseus, one of the warriors at Troy. After ten years
fighting the war, he spends another ten years sailing back home to his wife and
family. Penelope was considered the ideal female, Homer depicted her as the ideal
female based on her commitment, modesty, purity, and respect during her marriage
with Odysseus. During his ten-year voyage, he loses all of his comrades and ships
and makes his way home to Ithaca disguised as a beggar. Both of these works were
based on ancient legends. The stories are told in language that is simple, and direct.
The Homeric dialect was an archaic language based on Ionic dialect mixed with
some element of Aeolic dialect and Attic dialect, the latter due to the Athenian
edition of the 6th century BC. The epic verse was the hexameter.
The other great poet of the preclassical period was Hesiod. Unlike Homer,
Hesiod speaks of himself in his poetry; it remains true that nothing is known about
him from any external source. He was a native of Boeotia in central Greece, and is
thought to have lived and worked around 700 BC. His two works were Works and
Days and Theogony. The first is a faithful depiction of the poverty-stricken country
life he knew so well, and it sets forth principles and rules for farmers. Theogony is a
systematic account of creation and of the gods. It vividly describes the ages of
mankind, beginning with a long-past Golden Age. Together the works of Homer and
Hesiod comprised a kind of Bible for the Greeks; Homer told the story of a heroic
relatively near past, which Hesiod bracketed with a creation narrative and an
account of the practical realities of contemporary daily life.
The type of poetry called lyric got its name from the fact that it was originally
sung by individuals or a chorus accompanied by the instrument called the lyre.
Although, despite the name, the lyric poetry in this general meaning was divided in
four genres, two of which were not accompanied by cithara, but by flute. These two
letters genres were the elegiac poetry and the iambic poetry. Both were written in
ionic dialect, elegiac poetry was in elegiac couplets and iambic poems in iambic
trimeter. The first of the lyric poets was probably Archilochus of Paros, circa 700 BC,
the most important iambic poet. Only fragments remain of his work, as is the case
with most of the poets. The few remnants suggest that he was an embittered
adventurer who led a very turbulent life. The lyric in narrow sense was written in
History of the early world
Page 32
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
aeolic dialect and meters were really varied. The most famous authors were the socalled Nine lyric poets, and particularly Alcaeus and Sappho for monodic lyric and
Pindarus for choral lyric.
`
Ancient Greek drama developed around Greece's theater culture. Drama was
particularly developed in Athens, so works are written in Attic dialect. The
dialogues are in iambic trimeter, while chorus are in the meters of choral lyric.
In the age that followed the Greco-Persian Wars, the awakened national spirit
of Athens was expressed in hundreds of superb tragedies based on heroic and
legendary themes of the past. The tragic plays grew out of simple choral songs and
dialogues performed at festivals of the god Dionysus. In the classical period,
performances included three tragedies and one pastoral drama, depicting four
different episodes of the same myth. Wealthy citizens were chosen to bear the
expense of costuming and training the chorus as a public and religious duty.
Attendance at the festival performances was regarded as an act of worship.
Performances were held in the great open-air theater of Dionysus in Athens. All of
the greatest poets competed for the prizes offered for the best plays.
The three best authors are Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. From
Aeschylus, we still have seven tragedies, among which the only surviving series of
three tragedies performed together, the so-called Oresteia. Seven works of Sophocles
have survived, the most important of which are Oedipus rex and Antigone. From
Euripides, seventeen tragedies have survived, among them Medea and The Bacchae.
Like tragedy, comedy arose from a ritual in honor of Dionysus, but in this
case the plays were full of frank obscenity, abuse, and insult. At Athens, the
comedies became an official part of the festival celebration in 486 BC, and prizes
were offered for the best productions. As with the tragedians, few works still remain
of the great comedic writers. Of the works of earlier writers, only some plays by
Aristophanes exist. These are a treasure trove of comic presentation. He poked fun at
everyone and every institution. For boldness of fantasy, for merciless insult, for
unqualified indecency, and for outrageous and free political criticism, there is
nothing to compare to the comedies of Aristophanes. In The Birds, he held up
Athenian democracy to ridicule. In The Clouds, he attacked the philosopher Socrates.
In Lysistrata, he denounced war. Only 11 of his plays have survived. The third
dramatic genre was the satyr play. Although the genre was popular, only one
example has survived in its entirety, Euripides' Cyclops
Two of the most famous historians who have ever written flourished during
Greece's classical age: Herodotus and Thucydides. Herodotus is commonly called
the father of history, and his "History" contains the first truly literary use of prose in
Western literature. Of the two, Thucydides was the more careful historian. His
critical use of sources, inclusion of documents, and laborious research made his
History of the Peloponnesian War a significant influence on later generations of
historians.
A third historian of ancient Greece, Xenophon, began his Hellenica where
Thucydides ended his work about 411 BC and carried his history to 362 BC. His
writings were superficial in comparison to those of Thucydides, but he wrote with
History of the early world
Page 33
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
authority on military matters. He therefore is at his best in the Anabasis, an account
of his participation in a Greek mercenary army that tried to help the Persian Cyrus
expel his brother from the throne. Xenophon also wrote three works in praise of the
philosopher Socrates: Apology, Symposium, and Memorabilia. Although both
Xenophon and Plato knew Socrates, their accounts are very different, and it is
interesting to compare the view of the military historian to that of the poetphilosopher.
The greatest achievements of the 4th century were in philosophy. There were
many Greek philosophers, but Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle tower above the rest and
had enormous influence on Western society. Socrates himself wrote nothing, but his
thought (or a reasonable presentation of it) is believed to be given by Plato's early
Socratic dialogues. Aristotle is virtually without rivals among scientists and
philosophers. The first sentence of his Metaphysics reads: "All men by nature desire
to know." He has, therefore, been called the "Father of those who know." His
medieval disciple Thomas Aquinas referred to him simply as "the Philosopher."
Aristotle was a student at Plato's Academy, and it is known that like his teacher he
wrote dialogues, or conversations. None of these exist today. The body of writings
that has come down to the present probably represents lectures that he delivered at
his own school in Athens, the Lyceum. Even from these books the enormous range
of his interests is evident. He explored matters other than those that are today
considered philosophical. The treatises that exist cover logic, the physical and
biological sciences, ethics, politics, and constitutional government. There are also
treatises on The Soul and Rhetoric. His Poetics has had an enormous influence on
literary theory and served as an interpretation of tragedy for more than 2,000 years.
With his death in 322 BC, the classical era of Greek literature drew to a close.
Greek Art
Artistic production in Greece began in the prehistoric pre-Greek Cycladic and the
Minoan civilizations, both of which were influenced by local traditions and the art of
ancient Egypt.
There are three scholarly divisions of the stages of later ancient Greek art that
correspond roughly with historical periods of the same names. These are the
Archaic, the Classical and the Hellenistic. The Archaic period is usually dated from
1000 BC. The Persian Wars of 480 BC to 448 BC are usually taken as the dividing line
between the Archaic and the Classical periods, and the death of Alexander the Great
in 323 BC is regarded as separating the Classical from the Hellenistic period. Of
course, different forms of art developed at different speeds in different parts of the
Greek world, and varied to a degree from artist to artist. [1] There was no sharp
transition from one artistic period to another.
The art of ancient Greece has exercised an enormous influence on the culture
of many countries from ancient times until the present, particularly in the areas of
sculpture and architecture. In the West, the art of the Roman Empire was largely
derived from Greek models. In the East, Alexander the Great's conquests initiated
several centuries of exchange between Greek, Central Asian and Indian cultures,
resulting in Greco-Buddhist art, with ramifications as far as Japan. Following the
History of the early world
Page 34
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
Renaissance in Europe, the humanist aesthetic and the high technical standards of
Greek art inspired generations of European artists. Pottery was either red with black
designs or black with red design
Hellenistic philosophy went through a peculiar evolution—or retrogression, it
might almost be better to say. During the first stage it was still under the influence of
Greek thought and consequently showed an elemental regard for reason as the key
to the solution of man’s problems. During what may be considered a second stage,
skepticism concerning all truth and all values resulted in the rejection of reason
entirely. Toward the end of the civilization philosophy degenerated into a barren
mysticism, with the consequence that the whole intellectual approach, whether
based upon reason or experience, was thrown into the discard. Despite the
fundamental differences in their teachings, the philosophers of the Hellenistic Age
were all agreed upon one thing: the necessity of finding some way of , salvation for
man from the hardships and evils of his existence.
The first and most important of the Hellenistic philosophies were
Epicureanism and Stoicism, both of which originated about 300 B.C. The founders
were, respectively, Epicurus and Zeno, who were residents of Athens, though the
former was born on the island of Samos, while the latter was a native of Cyprus,
probably of Phoenician descent. Epicureanism and Stoicism had several features in
common. Both were individualistic, concerned not with the welfare of society
“primarily, but with the good of the individual. Materialistic, denying categorically
the existence of any spiritual substances; even divine beings and the soul were
declared to be formed of matter. In Stoicism and Epicureanism alike there were
definite traces of defeatism, since both of them implied that the efforts of man are
futile and suggested a retreat into Oriental quietism as an aim for the wise to pursue.
Lastly, the two philosophies were similar in their doctrines that concepts and
abstractions are nothing but names, that only particular things are real, and that all
knowledge has its basis in sense perception.
The two systems were quite different. Zeno and his principal disciples taught
that the cosmos is an ordered whole in which all contradictions are resolved for
ultimate good. Evil is, therefore, relative; the particular misfortunes which befall
human beings are but necessary incidents to the final perfection of the universe.
Everything that happens is rigidly determined in accordance with rational purpose.
Man is not master of his fate; his destiny is a link in an unbroken chain. He is free
only in the sense that he can accept his fate or rebel against it. But whether he accepts
or rebels, he cannot overcome it. The supreme duty of man is to submit to the order
of the universe in the knowledge that that order is good; in other words, to resign
himself as graciously as possible to his fate. Through such an act of resignation he
will attain to the highest happiness, which consists in tranquility of mind. The
individual who is most truly happy is therefore the man who by the assertion of his
rational nature has accomplished a perfect adjustment of his life to the cosmic
purpose and has purged his soul of all bitterness and whining protest against evil
turns of fortune
Development of Science
History of the early world
Page 35
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
The history of science in classical antiquity encompasses both those
inquiries into the workings of the universe aimed at such practical goals as
establishing a reliable calendar or determining how to cure a variety of illnesses and
those abstract investigations known as natural philosophy. The ancient peoples who
are considered the first scientists may have thought of themselves as natural
philosophers, as practitioners of a skilled profession (for example, physicians), or as
followers of a religious tradition (for example, temple healers). The encyclopaedic
works of Aristotle, Archimedes, Hippocrates, Galen, Ptolemy, Euclid, and others
spread throughout the world. These works and the important commentaries on
them were the wellspring of science.
The practical concerns of the ancient Greeks to establish a calendar is first
exemplified by the Works and Days of the Greek poet Hesiod, who lived around 700
BC. The Works and Days incorporated a calendar, in which the farmer was to regulate
seasonal activities by the seasonal appearances and disappearances of the stars, as
well as by the phases of the Moon which were held to be propitious or ominous.
Around 450 BC we begin to see compilations of the seasonal appearances and
disappearances of the stars in texts known as parapegmata, which were used to
regulate the civil calendars of the Greek city-states on the basis of astronomical
observations.
Medicine provides another example of practically oriented investigation of
nature among the Ancient Greeks. It has been pointed out that Greek medicine was
not the province of a single trained profession and there was no accepted method of
qualification of licensing. Physicians in the Hippocratic tradition, temple healers
associated with the cult of Asclepius, herb collectors, drug sellers, midwives, and
gymnastic trainers all claimed to be qualified as healers in specific contexts and
competed actively for patients. This rivalry among these competing traditions
contributed to an active public debate about the causes and proper treatment of
disease, and about the general methodological approaches of their rivals. In the
Hippocratic text, On the Sacred Disease, which deals with the nature of epilepsy, the
author attacks his rivals (temple healers) for their ignorance and for their love of
gain. The author of this text seems modern and progressive when he insists that
epilepsy has a natural cause, yet when he comes to explain what that cause is and
what the proper treatment would be, his explanation is as short on specific evidence
and his treatment as vague as that of his rivals.
There were several acute observers of natural phenomena, especially Aristotle
and Theophrastus, who wrote extensively on animals and plants. Theophrastus also
produced the first systematic attempt to classify minerals and rocks, summarised in
the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder in 77 AD.
Thales of Miletus (624–546 BC) considered that all things came to be from and
find their sustenance in water. Anaximander (610–546 BC) then suggested that
things could not come from a specific substance like water, but rather from
something he called the "boundless." Exactly what he meant is uncertain but it has
been suggested that it was boundless in its quantity, so that creation would not fail;
in its qualities, so that it would not be overpowered by its contrary; in time, as it has
History of the early world
Page 36
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
no beginning or end; and in space, as it encompasses all things. Anaximenes (585–
525 BC) returned to a concrete material substance, air, which could be altered by
rarefaction and condensation. He adduced common observations (the wine stealer)
to demonstrate that air was a substance and a simple experiment (breathing on one's
hand) to show that it could be altered by rarefaction and condensation.
Heraclitus of Ephesus (535–475 BC), then maintained that change, rather than
any substance was fundamental, although the element fire seemed to play a central
role in this process. Finally, Empedocles of Acragas (490–430 BC), seems to have
combined the views of his predecessors, asserting that there are four elements
(Earth, Water, Air and Fire) which produce change by mixing and separating under
the influence of two opposing "forces" that he calls Love and Strife.
All these theories imply that matter is a continuous substance. Two Greek
philosophers, Leucippus (first half of the 5th century BC) and Democritus of Abdera
(lived about 410 BC) came up with the notion that there were two real entities:
atoms, which were small indivisible particles of matter, and the void, which was the
empty space in which matter was located. Although all the explanations from Thales
to Democritus involve matter, what is more important is the fact that these rival
explanations suggesting an ongoing process of debate in which alternate theories
were put forth and criticized.
Xenophanes of Colophon prefigured palaeontology and geology as he
thought that periodically the earth and sea mix and turn all to mud, citing several
fossils of sea creatures that he had seen.
Pythagoreans
The materialist explanations of the origins of the cosmos seem to miss an
important point. It doesn't make much sense to think that an ordered universe comes
out of a random collection of matter. How can a random assemblage of fire or water
produce an ordered universe without the existence of some ordering principle?
The first step in this emphasis upon a model was that of the followers of
Pythagoras (582 – 507 BC), who saw number as the fundamental unchanging entity
underlying all the structure of the universe. For Pythagoras and his followers matter
was made up of ordered arrangements of point/atoms, arranged according to
geometrical principles into triangles, squares, rectangles, and so on... Even on a
larger scale, the parts of the universe were arranged on the principles of a musical
scale and a number. For example, the Pythagoreans held that there were ten
heavenly bodies because ten is a perfect number, the sum of 1 + 2 + 3 + 4. Thus with
the Pythagoreans we find number emerging as the rational basis for an orderly
universe — as the first proposal for a scientific ordering principle of the cosmos.
Aristotle was one of the most prolific natural philosophers of Antiquity. He
made countless observations of nature, especially of the structure and habits of
plants and animals. He also made many observations about the large-scale workings
of the universe, which led to his development of a comprehensive theory of physics.
For example, he developed a version of the classical theory of the elements (earth,
water, fire, air, and aether). In his theory, the light elements (fire and air) have a
natural tendency to move away from the centre of the universe while the heavy
History of the early world
Page 37
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
elements (earth and water) have a natural tendency to move toward the centre of the
universe, thereby forming a spherical earth. Since the celestial bodies – that is, the
planets and stars – were seen to move in circles, he concluded that they must be
made of a fifth element, which he called Aether.
Aristotle could point to the falling stone, rising flames, or pouring water to
illustrate his theory. His laws of motion emphasized the common observation that
friction was an omnipresent phenomenon – which anybody in motion would, unless
acted upon, come to rest.
Hellenistic science
The most brilliant age in the history of science prior to the seventeenth
century A.D. was the period of the Hellenistic civilization. Indeed, many of the
achievements of the modern age would scarcely have been possible without the
discoveries of the scientists of Alexandria, Syracuse, Pergamum, and other great
cities of the Hellenistic world. The reasons for the phenomenal development of
science in the centuries after the downfall of Alexander's empire are not far to seek.
Alexander himself had given some financial encouragement to the progress of
research. More important was the stimulus provided for intellectual inquiry by the
fusion of Chaldean and Egyptian science with the learning of the Greeks. Possibly a
third factor was the new interest in luxury and comfort and the demand for practical
knowledge which would enable man to solve the problems of a disordered and
unsatisfying existence.
The sciences which received the major attention in the Hellenistic Age were
astronomy, mathematics, geography, medicine, and physics. Chemistry as a pure
science was practically unknown. Except for the work of Theophrastus, who was the
first to recognize the sexuality of plants, the biological sciences were also largely
neglected. Neither chemistry nor biology bore any definite relationship to trade or to
the forms of industry then in existence and apparently they were not regarded as
having much practical value.
The most famous of the earlier astronomers of this time was Aristarchus of
Samos (310-230 B.C.), who is sometimes called the "Hellenistic Copernicus." As a
result of his discovery that the apparent immobility of the "fixed" stars is due to their
vast distance from the earth, he was the first to have any adequate conception of the
enormous size of the universe. But his chief title to fame comes from his deduction
that the earth and the other planets revolve around the sun. Unfortunately this
deduction was not accepted by his successors. It conflicted with the teachings of
Aristotle and with the anthropocentric ideas of the Greeks. Besides, it was not in
harmony with the beliefs of the Jews and other Orientals who made up so large a
percentage of the Hellenistic population. The only other astronomer of much
importance in the Hellenistic Age was Hipparchus, who did his most valuable work
in Alexandria in the latter half of the second century B.C. His chief contributions
were the invention of the astrolabe, the preparation of the best chart of the heavens
known to antiquity, the approximately correct calculation of the diameter of the
moon and its distance from the earth, and the discovery of the precession of the
equinoxes. His fame was eventually overshadowed, however, by the reputation of
History of the early world
Page 38
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
Ptolemy of Alexandria, the last of the Hellenistic astronomers. Although Ptolemy
made few original discoveries, he systematized the work of others. His principal
writing, the Almagest, based upon the geocentric theory, was handed down to
medieval Europe as the classic summary of ancient astronomy.
Closely allied with astronomy were two other sciences, mathematics and
geography. The Hellenistic mathematician of greatest renown was of course Euclid
(323-285 BC), erroneously considered the founder of geometry. Until the middle of
the nineteenth century his Elements of Geometry remained the accepted basis for the
study of that branch of mathematics. Much of the material in this work was not
original but was compiled as a synthesis of the discoveries of others. The most
original of the Hellenistic mathematicians was probably Hipparchus, who laid the
foundations of both plane and spherical trigonometry. Hellenistic geography owed
most of its development to Eratosthenes (ca. 276-ca. 194 B.C.), astronomer, poet,
philologist, and librarian of Alexandria. By means of sun dials placed some
hundreds of miles apart, he calculated the circumference of the earth with an error of
less than 200 miles. He produced the most accurate map that had yet been devised,
with the surface of the earth divided into degrees of latitude and longitude. He
propounded the theory that all of the oceans are really one, and he was the first to
suggest the possibility of reaching India by sailing west. One of his successors
divided the earth into the five climatic zones which are still recognized and
explained the ebb and flow of the tides as due to the influence of the moon.
Perhaps none of the Hellenistic advances in science surpassed in importance
the progress in medicine. Especially significant was the work of Herophilus of
Chalcedon, who conducted his researches in Alexandria about the beginning of the
third century. Without question he was the greatest anatomist of antiquity and,
according to Galen, the first to practice human dissection. Among his most
important achievements were a detailed description of the brain, with an attempt to
distinguish between the functions of its various parts; the discovery of the
significance of the pulse and its use in diagnosing illness; and the discovery that the
arteries contain blood alone, not a mixture of blood and air as Aristotle had taught,
and that their function is to carry blood from the heart to all parts of the body. The
value of this last discovery in laying the basis for knowledge of the circulation of the
blood can hardly be overestimated.
The ablest of the successors of Herophilus was Erasistratus, who nourished in
Alexandria about the middle of the third century. He is considered the founder of
physiology as a separate science. Not only did he practice dissection, but he is
believed to have gained a great deal of his knowledge of bodily functions from
vivisection. He discovered the valves of the heart, distinguished between motor and
sensory nerves, and taught that the ultimate branches of the arteries and veins are
connected. He was the first to reject absolutely the humeral theory of disease and to
condemn excessive blood-letting as a method of cure. Unfortunately this theory was
revived by Galen, the great encyclopedias of medicine who lived in the Roman
Empire in the second century A.D.
History of the early world
Page 39
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
Prior to the third century B.C. physics had been a branch of philosophy. It was
made a separate experimental science by Archimedes of Syracuse. Archimedes
discovered the law of floating bodies or specific gravity and formulated with
scientific exactness the principles of the lever, the pulley, and the screw. Among his
memorable inventions were the compound pulley, the tubular screw for pumping
water, the screw propeller for ships, and the burning lens. Although he has been
called the "technical Yankee of antiquity," there is evidence that he set no high value
upon his ingenious mechanical contraptions and preferred to devote his time to pure
scientific research.
Certain other individuals in the Hellenistic Age were quite willing to give all
their attention to applied science. Pre-eminent among them was Hero or Heron of
Alexandria, who lived in the last century B.C. The record of inventions credited to
him almost passes belief. The list includes a fire engine, a siphon, a force pump, a
hydraulic organ, a slot machine, a catapult operated by compressed air, a
thermoscope, and even a steam engine. How many of these inventions were really
his own is impossible to say, but there appears to be no question that such
contrivances were actually in existence in his time or soon thereafter. Nevertheless,
the total progress in applied science was comparatively slight, probably for the
reason that human labor continued to be so abundant and cheap that it was not
worthwhile to substitute the labor of machines.
Roman Civilization
Rome is one of the oldest named cities in the world. There is archaeological
evidence of human occupation of the Rome area from at least 5,000 years, but the
dense layer of much younger debris obscures Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites.
Evidence of stone tools, pottery and stone weapons attest to at least 6,000 years of
human presence. The power of the well known tale of Rome's legendary foundation
tends also to deflect attention from its actual, and much more ancient, origins. he
origin of the city's name is thought to be that of the reputed founder and first ruler,
the legendary Romulus. It is said that Romulus and his twin brother Remus,
apparent sons of the god Mars, who were suckled by a she-wolf after being
abandoned, decided to build a city. After an argument, Romulus killed Remus and
named the city Rome, after himself. After founding and naming (as the story goes)
Rome, he permitted men of all classes to come to Rome as citizens, including slaves
and freemen without distinction. To provide his citizens with wives, Romulus
invited the neighbouring tribes to a festival in Rome where he abducted the young
women from amongst them (known as The Rape of the Sabine Women). After the
ensuing war with the Sabines, Romulus shared the kingship with the Sabine king
Titus Tatius. Romulus selected 100 of the noblest men to form the Roman senate as
an advisory council to the king. These men he called patres, and their descendants
became the patricians. He created three centuries of equites named Ramnes (meaning
Romans), Tities (after the Sabine king) and a third called Luceres (Etruscans). He also
divided the general populace into thirty curiae, named after thirty of the Sabine
women who had intervened to end the war between Romulus and Tatius. The curiae
formed the voting units in the Comitia Curiata.
History of the early world
Page 40
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
After 650 BC, the Etruscans became dominant in Italy and expanded into
north-central Italy. Roman tradition claimed that Rome had been under the control
of seven kings from 753 to 509 BC beginning with the mythic Romulus who along
with his brother Remus were said to have founded the city of Rome. Two of the last
three kings, namely Tarquinius Priscus and Tarquinius Superbus, were said to be (at
least partially) Etruscan (Priscus is said by the ancient literary sources to be the son
of a Greek refugee, and an Etruscan mother), their names referring to the Etruscan
town of Tarquinia.
This traditional account of Roman history, which has come down to us
through Livy, Plutarch, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and others, is that in Rome's first
centuries, it was ruled by a succession of seven kings. The traditional chronology, as
codified by Varro, allots 243 years for their reigns, an average of almost 35 years,
which, since the work of Barthold Georg Niebuhr, has been generally discounted by
modern scholarship. The Gauls destroyed much of Rome's historical records when
they sacked the city after the Battle of the Allia in 390 BC and what was left was
eventually lost to time or theft. With no contemporary records of the kingdom
existing, all accounts of the kings must be carefully questioned. The list of kings is
also of dubious historical value, though the last-named kings may be historical
figures. It is believed by some historians (again, this is disputed) that Rome was
under the influence of the Etruscans for about a century. During this period a bridge
called the Pons Sublicius was built to replace the Tiber ford, and the Cloaca Maxima
was also built; the Etruscans are said to have been great engineers of this type of
structure. From a cultural and technical point of view, Etruscans had arguably the
second-greatest impact on Roman development, only surpassed by the Greeks.
Expanding further south, the Etruscans came into direct contact with the
Greeks. After initial success in conflicts with the Greek colonists, Etruria went into a
decline. Taking advantage of this, around 500 BC Rome rebelled and gained
independence from the Etruscans. It also abandoned monarchy in favour of a
republican system based on a Senate, composed of the nobles of the city, along with
popular assemblies which ensured political participation for most of the freeborn
men and elected magistrates annually.
The Etruscans left a lasting influence on Rome. The Romans learned to build
temples from them, and the Etruscans may have introduced the worship of a triad of
gods — Juno, Minerva, and Jupiter — from the Etruscan gods: Uni, Menrva, and
Tinia. However, the influence of Etruscan people in the evolution of Rome is often
overstated. Rome was primarily a Latin city. It never became fully Etruscan. Also,
evidence shows that Romans were heavily influenced by the Greek cities in the
South, mainly through trade
Roman Republic
After 500 BC, Rome joined with the Latin cities in defence against incursions
by the Sabines. Winning the Battle of Lake Regillus in 493 BC, Rome established
again the supremacy over the Latin countries it had lost after the fall of the
monarchy. After a lengthy series of struggles, this supremacy became fixed in 393,
when the Romans finally subdued the Volsci and Aequi. In 394 BC, they also
History of the early world
Page 41
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
conquered the menacing Etruscan neighbour of Veii. The Etruscan power was now
limited to Etruria itself, and Rome was the dominant city in Latium.
According to tradition, Rome became a republic in 509 BC. However, it took a
few centuries for Rome to become the great city of popular imagination. By the 3rd
century BC, Rome had become the pre-eminent city of the Italian peninsula. During
the Punic Wars between Rome and the great Mediterranean empire of Carthage (264
to 146 BC), Rome's stature increased further as it became the capital of an overseas
empire for the first time. Beginning in the 2nd century BC, Rome went through a
significant population expansion as Italian farmers, driven from their ancestral
farmlands by the advent of massive, slave-operated farms called latifundia, flocked
to the city in great numbers. The victory over Carthage in the First Punic War
brought the first two provinces outside the Italian peninsula, Sicily and Sardinia.
Parts of Spain (Hispania) followed, and in the beginning of the 2nd century the
Romans got involved in the affairs of the Greek world. By then all Hellenistic
kingdoms and the Greek city-states were in decline, exhausted from endless civil
wars and relying on mercenary troops.
The Romans looked upon the Greek civilisation with great admiration. The
Greeks saw Rome as a useful ally in their civil strifes, and it wasn't long before the
Roman legions were invited to intervene in Greece. In less than 50 years the whole of
mainland Greece was subdued. The Roman legions crushed the Macedonian
phalanx twice, in 197 and 168 BC; in 146 BC the Roman consul Lucius Mummius
razed Corinth, marking the end of free Greece. The same year Cornelius Scipio
Aemilianus, the son of Scipio Africanus, destroyed the city of Carthage, making it a
Roman province.
In the following years, Rome continued its conquests in Spain with Tiberius
Gracchus, and it set foot in Asia, when the last king of Pergamum gave his kingdom
to the Roman people. The end of the 2nd century brought once again threat, when a
great host of Germanic peoples, namely Cimbri and Teutones, crossed the river
Rhone and moved to Italy. Gaius Marius was consul five consecutive times (seven
total), and won two decisive battles in 102 and 101 BC He also reformed the Roman
army, giving it such a good reorganization that it remained unchanged for centuries.
The first thirty years of the last century BC were characterised by serious
internal problems that threatened the existence of the Republic. The Social War,
between Rome and its allies, and the Servile Wars (slave uprisings) were very hard
conflicts, all within Italy, and forced the Romans to change their policy with regards
to their allies and subjects. By then Rome had become an extensive power, with great
wealth which derived from the conquered people (as tribute, food or manpower, i.e.
slaves). The allies of Rome felt bitter since they had fought by the side of the
Romans, and yet they were not citizens and shared little in the rewards. Although
they lost the war, they finally got what they asked, and by the beginning of the 1st
century AD practically all free inhabitants of Italy were Roman citizens.
However, the growth of the Imperium Romanum (Roman power) created
new problems, and new demands, that the old political system of the Republic, with
its annually elected magistrates and its sharing of power, could not solve. The
History of the early world
Page 42
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
dictatorship of Sulla, the extraordinary commands of Pompey Magnus, and the first
triumvirate made that clear. In January 49 BC, Julius Caesar the conqueror of Gaul,
marched his legions against Rome. In the following years, he vanquished his
opponents, and ruled Rome for four years. After his assassination in 44 BC, the
Senate tried to re-establish the Republic, but its champions, Marcus Junius Brutus
(descendant of the founder of the republic) and Gaius Cassius Longinus were
defeated by Caesar's lieutenant Marcus Antonius and Caesar's nephew, Octavian.
The years 44-31 BC mark the struggle for power between Marcus Antonius
and Octavian (later known as Augustus). Finally, on 2 September 31 BC, in the Greek
promontory of Actium, the final battle took place in the sea. Octavian was victorious,
and became the sole ruler of Rome (and its empire). That date marks the end of the
Republic and the beginning of the Principate
By the end of the Republic, the city of Rome had achieved a grandeur
befitting the capital of an empire dominating the whole of the Mediterranean. It was,
at the time, the largest city in the world. Estimates of its peak population range from
450,000 to over 3.5 million people with estimates of 1 to 2 million being most popular
with historians. This grandeur increased under Augustus, who completed Caesar's
projects and added many of his own, such as the Forum of Augustus and the Ara
Pacis. He is said to have remarked that he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city
of marble (Urbem latericium invenit, marmoream reliquit). Augustus's successors sought
to emulate his success in part by adding their own contributions to the city. In AD
64, during the reign of Nero, the Great Fire of Rome left much of the city destroyed,
but in many ways it was used as an excuse for new development.
Rome was a subsidised city at the time, with roughly 15 to 25 percent of its
grain supply being paid by the central government. Commerce and industry played
a smaller role compared to that of other cities like Alexandria. This meant that Rome
had to depend upon goods and production from other parts of the Empire to sustain
such a large population. This was mostly paid by taxes that were levied by the
Roman government. If it had not been subsidised, Rome would have been
significantly smaller
Rome's population declined after its peak in the 2nd century. At the end of
that century, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, a plague killed 2,000 people a
day. Marcus Aurelius died in 180, his reign being the last of the "Five Good
Emperors" and Pax Romana. His son Commodus, who had been co-emperor since
AD 177, assumed full imperial power, which is most generally associated with the
gradual decline of the Western Roman Empire. Rome's population was only a
fraction of its peak when the Aurelian Wall was completed in the year 273 (at that
year its population was only around 500,000).
Starting in the early 3rd century, matters changed. The "Crisis of the third
century" defines the disasters and political troubles for the Empire, which nearly
collapsed. The new feeling of danger and the menace of barbarian invasions was
clearly shown by the decision of Emperor Aurelian, who at year 273 finished
encircling the capital itself with a massive wall which had a perimeter that measured
close to 20 km (12 mi). Rome formally remained capital of the empire, but emperors
History of the early world
Page 43
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
spent less and less time there. At the end of 3rd century Diocletian's political
reforms, Rome was deprived of its traditional role of administrative capital of the
Empire. Later, western emperors ruled from Milan or Ravenna, or cities in Gaul. In
330, Constantine I established a second capital at Constantinople. At this time, part
of the Roman aristocratic class moved to this new centre, followed by many of the
artists and craftsmen who were living in the city.
Still Rome remained one of the strongholds of Paganism, led by the aristocrats
and senators. However, the new walls did not stop the city being sacked first by
Alaric on 24 August, 410, by Geiseric in 455 and even by general Ricimer's unpaid
Roman troops (largely composed of barbarians) on 11 July, 472. This was the first
time in almost 800 years that Rome had fallen to an enemy. The previous sack of
Rome had been accomplished by the Gauls under their leader Brennus in 387 BC.
The sacking of 410 is seen as a major landmark in the decline and fall of the Western
Roman Empire. St. Jerome, living in Bethlehem at the time, wrote that "The City
which had taken the whole world was itself taken." These sackings of the city
astonished the entire Roman world. In any case, the damage caused by the sackings
may have been overestimated. The population already started to decline from the
late 4th century onward, although around the middle of the fifth century it seems
that Rome continued to be the most populous city of the two parts of the Empire,
with a population of not less than 650,000 inhabitants. The decline greatly
accelerated following the capture of Africa by the Vandals. Many inhabitants now
fled as the city no longer could be supplied with grain from Africa from the mid-5th
century onward. At the beginning of the 6th century Rome's population may have
been less than 100,000. Many monuments were being destroyed by the citizens
themselves, who stripped stones from closed temples and other precious buildings,
and even burned statues to make lime for their personal use. In addition, most of the
increasing number of churches was built in this way. For example, the first Saint
Peter's Basilica was erected using spoils from the abandoned Circus of Nero. This
"self-eating" attitude was a constant feature of Rome until the Renaissance. From the
4th century, imperial edicts against stripping of stones and especially marble were
common, but the need for their repetition shows that they were ineffective.
Sometimes new churches were created by simply taking advantage of early Pagan
temples, perhaps changing the Pagan god or hero to a corresponding Christian saint
or martyr. In this way, the Temple of Romulus and Remus became the basilica of the
twin saints Cosmas and Damian. Later, the Pantheon, Temple of All Gods, became
the church of All Martyrs.
Roman law
Roman courts held original jurisdiction over cases involving Roman citizens
throughout the empire, but there were too few judicial functionaries to impose
Roman law uniformly in the provinces. Most parts of the Eastern empire already had
well-established law codes and juridical procedures. In general, it was Roman policy
to respect the mos regionis ("regional tradition" or "law of the land") and to regard
local laws as a source of legal precedent and social stability. The compatibility of
Roman and local law was thought to reflect an underlying ius gentium, the "law of
nations" or international law regarded as common and customary among all human
History of the early world
Page 44
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
communities. If the particulars of provincial law conflicted with Roman law or
custom, Roman courts heard appeals, and the emperor held final authority to render
a decision.
Revenue and Taxation
Taxation under the Empire amounted to about 5 percent of gross product. The
typical tax rate paid by individuals ranged from 2 to 5 percent. The tax code was
"bewildering" in its complicated system of direct and indirect taxes, some paid in
cash and some in kind. Taxes might be specific to a province, or kinds of properties
such as fisheries or salt evaporation ponds; they might be in effect for a limited time.
Tax collection was justified by the need to maintain the military, and taxpayers
sometimes got a refund if the army captured a surplus of booty. In-kind taxes were
accepted from less-monetized areas, particularly those who could supply grain or
goods to army camps.
The primary source of direct tax revenue was individuals, who paid a poll tax
and a tax on their land, construed as a tax on its produce or productive capacity.
Supplemental forms could be filed by those eligible for certain exemptions; for
example, Egyptian farmers could register fields as fallow and tax-exempt depending
on flood patterns of the Nile. Tax obligations were determined by the census, which
required each head of household to appear before the presiding official and provide
a head count of his household, as well as an accounting of property he owned that
was suitable for agriculture or habitation.
A major source of indirect-tax revenue was the customs and tolls on imports
and exports, including among provinces. Special taxes were levied on the slave
trade. Toward the end of his reign, Augustus instituted a 4 percent tax on the sale of
slaves, which Nero shifted from the purchaser to the dealers, who responded by
raising their prices. An owner who manumitted a slave paid a "freedom tax",
calculated at 5 percent of value.
An inheritance tax of 5 percent was assessed when Roman citizens above a
certain net worth left property to anyone but members of their immediate family.
Revenues from the estate tax and from a 1 percent sales tax on auctions went toward
the veterans' pension fund.
Low taxes helped the Roman aristocracy increase their wealth, which
equalled or exceeded the revenues of the central government. An emperor
sometimes replenished his treasury by confiscating the estates of the "super-rich",
but in the later period, the resistance of the wealthy to paying taxes was one of the
factors contributing to the collapse of the Empire.
Legal Treatises
Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, including Roman Military
Jurisdiction and the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of
jurisprudence, from the 12 Tables ( 449 BC), to the Corpus Juris Civilis (AD 529)
ordered by Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I. The historical importance of Roman
law is reflected by the continued use of Latin legal terminology in legal systems
influenced by it.
History of the early world
Page 45
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
After the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire, the Justinian Code
remained in effect in the Eastern empire, known in the modern era as the Byzantine
Empire (331–1453 AD). From the 7th century onward, the legal language in the East
was Greek.
"Roman law" also denotes the legal system applied in most of Western Europe until
the end of the 18th century. In Germany, Roman law practice remained in place
longer under the Holy Roman Empire (963–1806). Roman law thus served as a basis
for legal practice throughout Western continental Europe, as well as in most former
colonies of these European nations, including Latin America, and also in Ethiopia.
English and North American common law were influenced also by Roman law,
notably in their Latinate legal glossary. Eastern Europe was also influenced by the
jurisprudence of the Corpus Juris Civilis, especially in countries such as medieval
Romania which created a new system, a mixture of Roman and local law. Also,
Eastern European law was influenced by the "Farmer's Law" of the medieval
Byzantine legal system was the ancient legislation that stood at the foundation of
Roman law. The Tables consolidated earlier traditions into an enduring set of laws.
The Twelve Tables are sufficiently comprehensive that it has been described
as a 'code', although modern scholars consider this characterisation exaggerated. The
Tables were a sequence of definitions of various private rights and procedures. They
generally took for granted such things as the institutions of the family and various
rituals for formal transactions. The provisions were often highly specific and diverse,
and lack an intelligible system or order.
The Twelve Tables were said by the Romans to have come about as a result of
the long social struggle between patricians and plebeians. After the expulsion of the
last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, the Republic was governed by a hierarchy
of magistrates. Initially only patricians were eligible to become magistrates and this,
among other plebeian complaints, was a source of discontent for plebeians. In the
context of this unequal status, plebeians would take action to secure concessions for
them using the threat of secession. They would threaten to leave the city with the
consequence that it would grind to a halt, as the plebeians were Rome's labour force.
Tradition held that one of the most important concessions won in this class struggle
was the establishment of the Twelve Tables, establishing basic procedural rights for
all Roman citizens as against one another. However this tradition cannot be verified,
and it the drafting of the Twelve Tables may have been fomented by a desire for selfregulation by the patricians, or for other reasons.
Around 451 BC, the first decemvirate - board of "Ten Men" were appointed to
draw up the first ten tables. According to Livy, they sent an embassy to Greece to
study the legislative system of Athens, known as the Solonian Constitution, but also
to find out about the legislation of other Greek cities. Some scholars dispute the
veracity of any claim that the Romans imitated the Greeks in this respect or suggest
that they visited the Greek cities of Southern Italy, and did not travel all the way to
Greece. In 450 BC, the second decemviri started work on the last two tables.
The first decemvirate completed the first ten codes in 450 BC. In 449 BC, the
second decemvirate completed the last two codes, and after a secessio plebis to force
History of the early world
Page 46
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
the Senate to consider them, the Law of the Twelve Tables was formally
promulgated. According to Livy, the Twelve Tables were inscribed on bronze and
posted publicly, so all Romans could read and know them.
The Twelve Tables are no longer extant: although they remained an important
source of through the Republic, they gradually became obsolete, eventually being
only of historical interest. Some believe that the original tablets must have been
destroyed when the Gauls under Brennus burnt Rome in 387 BC. Cicero claimed that
he learned them by heart as a boy in school, but that no one did so any longer. What
we have of them today are brief excerpts and quotations from these laws in other
authors, often in clearly updated language. They are written in an archaic, laconic
Latin. As such, though it cannot be determined whether the quoted fragments
accurately preserve the original form, what is present gives some insight into the
grammar of early Latin. Some claim that the text was written as such so plebeians
could more easily memorize the laws, as literacy was not commonplace during early
Rome.
Like most other early codes of law, they were largely procedural, combining
strict and rigorous penalties with equally strict and rigorous procedural forms. In
most of the surviving quotations from these texts, the original table that held them is
not given. Scholars have guessed at where surviving fragments belong by comparing
them with the few known attributions and records, many of which do not include
the original lines, but paraphrases. It cannot be known with any certainty from what
survives that the originals ever were organized this way, or even if they ever were
organized by subject at all.
Slavery
The 1st-century BCE Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus indicates
that the Roman institution of slavery began with the legendary founder Romulus
giving Roman fathers the right to sell their own children into slavery, and kept
growing with the expansion of the Roman state. Slave ownership was most
widespread throughout the Roman citizenry from the Second Punic War (218–201
BCE) to the 4th century CE. The Greek geographer Strabo (1st century CE) records
how an enormous slave trade resulted from the collapse of the Seleucid Empire
(100–63 BCE).
The Twelve Tables, Rome's oldest legal code, have brief references to slavery,
indicating that the institution was of long standing. In the tripartite division of law
by the jurist Ulpian (2nd century CE), slavery was an aspect of the ius gentium, the
customary international law held in common among all peoples (gentes). The "law of
nations" was neither natural law, which existed in nature and governed animals as
well as humans, nor civil law, which was the body of laws specific to a people. All
human beings are born free (liberi) under natural law, but slavery was held to be a
practice common to all nations, who might then have specific civil laws pertaining to
slaves. In ancient warfare, the victor had the right under the ius gentium to enslave a
defeated population; however, if a settlement had been reached through diplomatic
negotiations or formal surrender, the people were by custom to be spared violence
and enslavement.
History of the early world
Page 47
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
Slavery in ancient Rome played an important role in society and the
economy. Besides manual labor, slaves performed many domestic services, and
might be employed at highly skilled jobs and professions. Teachers, accountants,
and physicians were often slaves. Greek slaves in particular might be highly
educated. Unskilled slaves or those condemned to slavery as punishment, worked
on farms, in mines, and at mills. Their living conditions were brutal, and their lives
short.
Slaves were considered property under Roman law and had no legal
personhood. Unlike Roman citizens, they could be subjected to corporal
punishment, sexual exploitation, torture, and summary execution. The testimony of
a slave could not be accepted in a court of law unless the slave was tortured—a
practice based on the belief that slaves in a position to be privy to their masters'
affairs would be too virtuously loyal to reveal damaging evidence unless coerced.
Over time, however, slaves gained increased legal protection, including the right to
file complaints against their masters. Attitudes changed in part because of the
influence among the educated elite of the Stoics, whose egalitarian views of
humanity extended to slaves.
Roman slaves could hold property which, despite the fact that it belonged to
their masters, they were allowed to use as if it were their own. Skilled or educated
slaves were allowed to earn their own money, and might hope to save enough to
buy their freedom. Such slaves were often freed by the terms of their master's will, or
for services rendered. A notable example of a high-status slave was Tiro, the
secretary of Cicero. Tiro was freed before his master's death, and was successful
enough to retire on his own country estate, where he died at the age of 99.
Rome differed from Greek city-states in allowing freed slaves to become
citizens. After manumission, a male slave who had belonged to a Roman citizen
enjoyed not only passive freedom from ownership, but active political freedom,
including the right to vote. A slave who had acquired liberty was thus a libertus in
relation to his former master, who then became his patron. As a social class, freed
slaves were libertini, though later writers used the terms libertus and libertinus
interchangeably. Libertini were not entitled to hold public office or state priesthoods,
nor could they achieve legitimate senatorial rank. During the early Empire, however,
freedmen held key positions in the government bureaucracy, so much so that
Hadrian limited their participation by law. Any future children of a freedman would
be born free, with full rights of citizenship. Vernae were slaves born within a
household or on a family farm or agricultural estate. There was a stronger social
obligation to care for vernae, whose epitaphs sometimes identify them as such, and at
times they would have been the children of free males of the household. The general
Latin word for slave was servus.
A major source of slaves had been Roman military expansion during the
Republic. The use of former soldiers as slaves led perhaps inevitably to a series of
armed rebellions, the Servile Wars, the last of which was led by Spartacus. During
the Pax Romana of the early Roman Empire (1st–2nd century CE), emphasis was
History of the early world
Page 48
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
placed on maintaining stability, and the lack of new territorial conquests dried up
this supply line of human trafficking
Throughout the Roman period many slaves for the Roman market were
acquired through warfare. Many captives were either brought back as war booty or
sold to traders, and ancient sources cite anywhere from hundreds to tens of
thousands of such slaves captured in each war. These wars included every major war
of conquest from the Monarchical period to the Imperial period, as well as the Social
and Samnite Wars. The prisoners taken or re-taken after the three Roman Servile
Wars also contributed to the slave supply. While warfare during the Republic
provided the largest figures for captives, warfare continued to produce slaves for
Rome throughout the imperial period.
During the period of Roman imperial expansion, the increase in wealth
amongst the Roman elite and the substantial growth of slavery transformed the
economy. Although the economy was dependent on slavery, Rome was not the most
slave-dependent culture in history. Among the Spartans, for instance, the slave class
of helots outnumbered the free by about seven to one, according to Herodotus.
Delos in the eastern Mediterranean was made a free port in 166 BCE and
became one of the main market venues for slaves. Multitudes of slaves who found
their way to Italy were purchased by wealthy landowners in need of large numbers
of slaves to labour on their estates. Historian Keith Hopkins noted that it was land
investment and agricultural production which generated great wealth in Italy, and
considered that Rome's military conquests and the subsequent introduction of vast
wealth and slaves into Italy had effects comparable to widespread and rapid
technological innovations.
Augustus imposed a 2 percent tax on the sale of slaves, estimated to generate
annual revenues of about 5 million sesterces—a figure that indicates some 250,000
sales. The tax was increased to 4 percent by 43 CE. Slave markets seem to have
existed in every city of the Empire, but outside Rome the major centre was Ephesus.
A slave rebellion is an armed uprising by slaves. Slave rebellions have
occurred in nearly all societies that practice slavery, and are amongst the most feared
events for slaveholders. The most successful slave rebellion in history has been led
by Roman slave Spartacus, as well as the thrall.
Imperial Contacts
The Romans with their innovations in law and administration could maintain
order in a vast empire. The administration of the provinces of the faraway places
was controlled by the central government. The imperial government encouraged
long distance trade. Necessary infrastructure for the growth of trade and commerce
was already prepared by authorities. The famous Roman roads primarily built for
the movement of armies were now used for exchange of goods with different parts
of the world. Along with the territorial expansion of the Roman Empire, it made
contacts with different places like Anatolia, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, Britain, Gaul, India,
China, and Sri Lanka.
The roman trade with the east, especially India was conducted through both
by land and sea. The land route known as the ‘Great Central Asian caravan Road’
History of the early world
Page 49
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
passed through Anatolia and Persia. The sea trade was from Mediterranean through
the Red Sea. With the conquest of Egypt, by Augustus the roman trade and other
contacts with the outside world especially with the East increased rapidly. The use
of monsoon winds made the sea voyage safer and uninterrupted. In fact, it was
pioneered by the Axumites (Ethiopians) from whom the Romans learned its
techniques. In many cases the Axumites were used as carriers also.
The first two centuries of Common Era indicate the increase in the trade
between Rome with the Asian countries, especially with India. The administration of
the Mediterranean basin also helped them. Strabo mentioned of the vast increase in
trade ,following the Roman annexation of Egypt indicate that Monsoon was known
to them and manipulation of trade Strabo writes: ‘I learned that as many as 120
vessels were sailing from Myos Homos to India , whereas formerly, a very few
ventured to undertake the voyage and to carry on traffic in Indian merchandise.
The commerce of the Roman Empire was a major sector of the economy
during the early Republic and throughout most of the imperial period. Fashions and
trends in historiography and in popular culture have tended to neglect the economic
basis of the empire in favor of the lingua franca of Latin and the exploits of the
Roman legions. The language and the legions were supported by trade while being
at the same time part of its backbone. Romans were businessmen and the longevity
of their empire was due to their commercial trade. Whereas in theory members of
the Roman Senate and their sons were restricted when engaging in trade, the
members of the Equestrian order were involved in businesses, despite their upper
class values that laid the emphasis on military pursuits and leisure activities.
Plebeians and freedmen held shop or manned stalls at markets while vast quantities
of slaves did most of the hard work. The slaves were themselves also the subject of
commercial transactions. Their high proportion in society and the reality of
runaways, the Servile Wars and minor uprisings, they gave a distinct flavor to
Roman commerce.
The intricate, complex, and extensive accounting of Roman trade was
conducted with counting boards and the Roman abacus. The abacus, using Roman
numerals, was ideally suited to the counting of Roman currency and tallying of
Roman measures.
The Romans knew two types of businessmen, the negotiators and the
Mercator’s. The negotiators were in part bankers because they lent money on
interest. They also bought and sold staples in bulk or did commerce in wholesale
quantities of goods. In some instances the argentari are considered as a subset of the
negotiators and in others as a group apart. The argentarii acted as agents in public or
private auctions, kept deposits of money for individuals, cashed cheques (prescriptio)
and served as moneychangers. They kept strict books, or tabulae, which were
considered as legal proof by the courts. The argentarii sometimes did the same kind
of work as the mensarii, who were public bankers appointed by the state. The
mercatores were usually plebeians or freedmen. They were present in all the openair markets or covered shops, manning stalls or hawking goods by the side of the
road. They were also present near Roman military camps during campaigns, where
History of the early world
Page 50
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
they sold food and clothing to the soldiers and paid cash for any booty coming from
military activities.
There is some information on the economy of Roman Palestine from Jewish
sources of around the 3rd century AD. Itinerant pedlars (rochel) took spices and
perfumes to the rural population. This suggests that the economic benefits of the
Empire did reach, at least, the upper levels of the peasantry.
The Forum Cuppedinis in ancient Rome was a market which offered general
goods. At least four other large markets specialized in specific goods such as cattle,
wine, fish and herbs and vegetables, but the Roman forum drew the bulk of the
traffic. All new cities, like Timgad, were laid out according to an orthogonal grid
plan which facilitated transportation and commerce. The cities were connected by
goods.
The Forum Cuppedinis in ancient Rome was a market which offered general
goods. At least four other large markets specialized in specific goods such as cattle,
wine, fish and herbs and vegetables, but the Roman forum drew the bulk of the
traffic. All new cities, like Timgad, were laid out according to an orthogonal grid
plan which facilitated transportation and commerce. The cities were connected by
good roads. Navigable rivers were extensively used and some canals were dug but
neither leave such clear archaeology as roads and consequently they tend to be
underestimated. A major mechanism for the expansion of trade was peace. All
settlements, especially the smaller ones, could be located in economically rational
positions. Before and after the Roman Empire, hilltop defensive positions were
preferred for small settlements and piracy made coastal settlement particularly
hazardous for all but the largest cities.
By the 1st century, the provinces of the Roman Empire were trading huge
volumes of commodities to one another by sea routes. There was an increasing
tendency for specialization, particularly in manufacturing, agriculture and mining.
Some provinces specialized in producing certain types of goods, such as grain in
Egypt and North Africa and wine and olive oil in Italy, Hispania and Greece.
Knowledge of the Roman economy is extremely patchy. The vast bulk of
traded goods, being agricultural, normally leave no direct archaeology. Very
exceptionally, as at Berenice, there is evidence of long distance trade in pepper,
almonds, hazelnuts, stone pine cones, walnuts, coconuts, apricots and peaches
besides the more expected figs, raisins and dates (Cappers). The wine, olive oil and
garum (fermented fish sauce) trades were exceptional in leaving amphorae behind.
There is a single reference of the Syrian export of kipi stiff quince jam or marmalade
to Rome.
Even before the republic, the Roman Kingdom was engaged in regular
commerce using the river Tiber. Before the Punic Wars completely changed the
nature of commerce in the Mediterranean, the Roman republic had important
commercial exchanges with Carthage. It entered into several commercial and
political agreements with its rival city in addition to engaging in simple retail
trading. The Roman Empire traded with the Chinese over the Silk Road.
History of the early world
Page 51
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
Maritime archeology and ancient manuscripts from classical antiquity show
evidence of vast Roman commercial fleets. The most substantial remains from this
commerce are the infrastructure remains of harbors, moles, warehouses and
lighthouses at ports such as Civitavecchia, Ostia, Portus, Leptis Magna and Caesarea
Maritima. At Rome itself, Monte Testaccio is a tribute to the scale of this commerce.
As with most Roman technology, the Roman seagoing commercial ships had no
significant advances over Greek ships of the 1st century, the provinces of the Roman
Empire were trading huge volumes of commodities to one another by sea routes.
There was an increasing tendency for specialization, particularly in manufacturing,
agriculture and mining. Some provinces specialized in producing certain types of
goods, such as grain in Egypt and North Africa and wine and olive oil in Italy,
Hispania and Greece.
Knowledge of the Roman economy is extremely patchy. The vast bulk of
traded goods, being agricultural, normally leave no direct archaeology. Very
exceptionally, as at Berenice, there is evidence of long distance trade in pepper,
almonds, hazelnuts, stone pine cones, walnuts, coconuts, apricots and peaches
besides the more expected figs, raisins and dates. The wine, olive oil and garum
(fermented fish sauce) trades were exceptional in leaving amphorae behind. There is
a single reference of the Syrian export of kipi stiff quince jam or marmalade to Rome.
Even before the republic, the Roman Kingdom was engaged in regular
commerce using the river Tiber. Before the Punic Wars completely changed the
nature of commerce in the Mediterranean, the Roman republic had important
commercial exchanges with Carthage. It entered into several commercial and
political agreements with its rival city in addition to engaging in simple retail
trading. The Roman Empire traded with the Chinese (via Parthian and other
intermediaries) over the Silk Road.
Maritime archeology and ancient manuscripts from classical antiquity show
evidence of vast Roman commercial fleets. The most substantial remains from this
commerce are the infrastructure remains of harbors, moles, warehouses and
lighthouses at ports such as Civitavecchia, Ostia, Portus, Leptis Magna and Caesarea
Maritima. At Rome itself, Monte Testaccio is a tribute to the scale of this commerce.
As with most Roman technology, the Roman seagoing commercial ships had no
significant advances over Greek ships of the previous centuries, though the lead
sheeting of hulls for protection seems to have been more common. The Romans used
round hulled sailing ships. Continuous Mediterranean
Roman Art
Roman art refers to the visual arts made in Ancient Rome and in the
territories of the Roman Empire. Roman art includes architecture, painting, sculpture
and mosaic work. Luxury objects in metal-work, gem engraving, ivory carvings, and
glass, are sometimes considered in modern terms to be minor forms of Roman art,
although this would not necessarily have been the case for contemporaries.
Sculpture was perhaps considered as the highest form of art by Romans, but figure
painting was also very highly regarded. The two forms have had very contrasting
rates of survival, with a very large body of sculpture surviving from about the 1st
History of the early world
Page 52
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
century BC onwards, though very little from before, but very little painting at all
remains, and probably nothing that a contemporary would have considered to be of
the highest quality. Ancient Roman pottery was not a luxury product, but a vast
production of "fine wares" in terra sibilate were decorated with reliefs that reflected
the latest taste, and provided a large group in society with stylish objects at what
was evidently an affordable price. Roman coins were an important means of
propaganda, and have survived in enormous numbers. Other perishable forms of art
have not survived at all. While the traditional view of the ancient Roman artists is
that they often borrowed from, and copied Greek precedents, more recent analysis
has indicated that Roman art is a highly creative pastiche relying heavily on Greek
models but also encompassing Etruscan, native Italic, and even Egyptian visual
culture. Stylistic eclecticism and practical application are the hallmarks of much
Roman art.
Pliny, Ancient Rome’s most important historian concerning the arts, recorded
that nearly all the forms of art – sculpture, landscape, portrait painting, even genre
painting – were advanced in Greek times, and in some cases, more advanced than in
Rome. Though very little remains of Greek wall art and portraiture, certainly Greek
sculpture and vase painting bears this out. These forms were not likely surpassed by
Roman artists in fineness of design or execution. As another example of the lost
"Golden Age", he singled out Peiraikos, "whose artistry is surpassed by only a very
few ... He painted barbershops and shoemakers’ stalls, donkeys, vegetables, and
such, and for that reason came to be called the 'painter of vulgar subjects'; yet these
works are altogether delightful, and they were sold at higher prices than the greatest
[paintings] of many other artists. The Greek antecedents of Roman art were
legendary. In the mid-5th century BC, the most famous Greek artists were
Polygnotos, noted for his wall murals, and Apollodoros, the originator of
chiaroscuro. The development of realistic technique is credited to Zeuxis and
Parrhasius, who according to ancient Greek legend, are said to have once competed
in a bravura display of their talents, history’s earliest descriptions of trompe l’oeil
painting. In sculpture, Skopas, Praxiteles, Phidias, and Lysippos were the foremost
sculptors. It appears that Roman artists had much Ancient Greek art to copy from, as
trade in art was brisk throughout the empire, and much of the Greek artistic heritage
found its way into Roman art through books and teaching. Ancient Greek treatises
on the arts are known to have existed in Roman times though are now lost. Many
Roman artists came from Greek colonies and provinces.
The high number of Roman copies of Greek art also speaks of the esteem
Roman artists had for Greek art, and perhaps of its rarer and higher quality. Many of
the art forms and methods used by the Romans – such as high and low relief, freestanding sculpture, bronze casting, vase art, mosaic, cameo, coin art, fine jewelry and
metalwork, funerary sculpture, perspective drawing, caricature, genre and portrait
painting, landscape painting, architectural sculpture, and trompe l’oeil painting – all
were developed or refined by Ancient Greek artists. One exception is the Roman
bust, which did not include the shoulders. The traditional head-and-shoulders bust
may have been an Etruscan or early Roman form. Virtually every artistic technique
and method used by Renaissance artists 1,900 year later had been demonstrated by
History of the early world
Page 53
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
Ancient Greek artists, with the notable exceptions of oil colors and mathematically
accurate perspective. Where Greek artists were highly revered in their society, most
Roman artists were anonymous and considered tradesmen. There is no recording, as
in Ancient Greece, of the great masters of Roman art, and practically no signed
works. Where Greeks worshipped the aesthetic qualities of great art and wrote
extensively on artistic theory, Roman art was more decorative and indicative of
status and wealth, and apparently not the subject of scholars or philosophers.
Owing in part to the fact that the Roman cities were far larger than the Greek
city-states in power and population, and generally less provincial, art in Ancient
Rome took on a wider, and sometimes more utilitarian, purpose. Roman culture
assimilated many cultures and was for the most part tolerant of the ways of
conquered peoples. Roman art was commissioned, displayed, and owned in far
greater quantities, and adapted to more uses than in Greek times. Wealthy Romans
were more materialistic; they decorated their walls with art, their home with
decorative objects, and themselves with fine jewellery.
In the Christian era of the late Empire, from 350 to 500 CE, wall painting,
mosaic ceiling and floor work, and funerary sculpture thrived, while full-sized
sculpture in the round and panel painting died out, most likely for religious reasons.
When Constantine moved the capital of the empire to Byzantium (renamed
Constantinople), Roman art incorporated Eastern influences to produce the
Byzantine style of the late empire. When Rome was sacked in the 5th century,
artisans moved to and found work in the Eastern capital. The Church of Hagia
Sophia in Constantinople employed nearly 10,000 workmen and artisans, in a final
burst of Roman art under Emperor Justinian (527–565 AD), who also ordered the
creation of the famous mosaics of Ravenna, one of the vast body of Roman painting
we now have only a very few pockets of survivals, with many documented types not
surviving at all, or doing so only from the very end of the period. The best known
and most important pocket is the wall paintings from Pompeii, Herculaneum and
other sites nearby, which show how residents of a wealthy seaside resort decorated
their walls in the century or so before the fatal eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD,
a succession of dated styles have been defined and analyzed by modern art
historians beginning with August Mau, showing increasing elaboration and
sophistication.
Starting in the 3rd century AD and finishing by about 400 we have a large
body of paintings from the Catacombs of Rome, by no means all Christian, showing
the later continuation of the domestic decorative tradition in a version adapted probably not greatly adapted - for use in burial chambers, in what was probably a
rather humbler social milieu than the largest houses in Pompeii. Much of Nero's
palace in Rome, the Domus Aurea, survived as grottos and gives us examples which
we can be sure represent the very finest quality of wall-painting in its style, and
which may well have represented significant innovation in style. There are a number
of other parts of painted rooms surviving from Rome and elsewhere, which
somewhat help to fill in the gaps of our knowledge of wall-painting. From Roman
Egypt there are a large number of what are known as Fayum mummy portraits, bust
portraits on wood added to the outside of mummies by a Romanized middle-class;
History of the early world
Page 54
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
despite their very distinct local character they are probably broadly representative of
Roman style in painted portraits, which are otherwise entirely lost.
Nothing remains of the Greek paintings imported to Rome during the 4th and
5th centuries, or of the painting on wood done in Italy during that period In sum, the
range of samples is confined to only about 200 years out of the about 900 years of
Roman history, and of provincial and decorative painting. Most of this wall painting
was done using the secco (“dry”) method, but some fresco paintings also existed in
Roman times. There is evidence from mosaics and a few inscriptions that some
Roman paintings were adaptations or copies of earlier Greek works. However,
adding to the confusion is the fact that inscriptions may be recording the names of
immigrant Greek artists from Roman times, not from Ancient Greek originals that
were copied. The Romans entirely lacked a tradition of figurative vase-painting
comparable to that of the Ancient Greeks, which the Etruscans had emulated.
Roman architecture developed different aspects of Ancient Greek
architecture and newer technologies such as the arch and the dome to create a new
architectural style. Roman architecture flourished throughout the Empire during the
Pax Romana. Its use of new materials, particularly concrete, was an important
feature.
Roman Architecture covers the period from the establishment of the Roman
Republic in 509 BC to about the 4th century AD, after which it becomes reclassified
as Late Antique or Byzantine architecture. Most of the many surviving examples are
from the later imperial period. Roman architectural style continued to influence
building in the former empire for many centuries, and the style used in Western
Europe beginning about 1000 is called Romanesque architecture to reflect this
dependence on basic Roman forms. The Ancient Romans were responsible for
significant developments in housing and public hygiene, for example their public
and private baths and latrines, under-floor heating in the form of the hypocaust,
mica glazing and piped hot and cold water.
Factors such as wealth and high population densities in cities forced the
ancient Romans to discover new architectural solutions of their own. The use of
vaults and arches, together with a sound knowledge of building materials, enabled
them to achieve unprecedented successes in the construction of imposing structures
for public use. Examples include the aqueducts of Rome, the Baths of Diocletian and
the Baths of Caracalla, the basilicas and Colosseum. These were reproduced at
smaller scale in most important towns and cities in the Empire. Some surviving
structures are almost complete, such as the town walls of Lugo in Hispania
Tarraconensis, now northern Spain.
The Ancient Romans intended that public buildings should be made to
impress, as well as perform a public function. The Romans did not feel restricted by
Greek aesthetic axioms alone in achieving these objectives. The Pantheon is an
example of this, particularly in the version rebuilt by Hadrian, which remains
perfectly preserved, and which were over the centuries that has served, particularly
in the Western Hemisphere, as the inspiration for countless public buildings. The
same emperor left his mark on the landscape of northern Britain when he built a wall
History of the early world
Page 55
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
to mark the limits of the empire, and after further conquests in Scotland, the
Antonine Wall was built to replace Hadrian's Wall.
The Romans were indebted to their Etruscan neighbors and forefathers who
supplied them with a wealth of knowledge essential for future architectural
solutions, such as the use of hydraulics and the construction of arches. The Romans
absorbed Greek Architectural influence both directly and indirectly. The influence is
evident in many ways; for example, in the introduction and use of the Triclinium in
Roman villas as a place and manner of dining. The Romans were also known to
employ Greek craftsmen and engineers to construct Roman buildings.
Architectural features
The Roman use of the arch and their improvements in the use of concrete and
bricks facilitated the building of the many aqueducts throughout the empire, such as
the Aqueduct of Segovia and the eleven aqueducts in Rome itself, including the
Aqua Claudia and Anio Novus. The same concepts produced numerous bridges,
some of which are still in daily use, for example the Puente Romano at Mérida in
Spain, and the Pont Julien and the bridge at Vaison-la-Romaine, both in Provence,
France.
The dome permitted construction of vaulted ceilings without crossbeams and
made possible large covered public space such as public baths and basilicas. The
Romans based much of their architecture on the dome, such as Hadrian's Pantheon
in the city of Rome, the Baths of Diocletian and the Baths of Caracalla.
The use of arches that spring directly from the tops of columns was a Roman
development, seen from the 1st century AD, that was very widely adopted in
medieval Western, Byzantine and Islamic architecture. The Romans first adopted the
arch from the Etruscans, and implemented it in their own building. An arch
transmits load evenly and is still commonly used in architecture today.
Although concrete had been used on a minor scale in Mesopotamia, Roman
architects perfected Roman concrete and used it in buildings where it could stand on
its own and support a great deal of weight. Though most would consider concrete
the Roman contribution most relevant to the modern world, the Empire's style of
architecture can still be seen throughout Europe and North America in the arches
and domes of many governmental and religious buildings.
Science
Ancient Rome boasted impressive technological feats, using many
advancements that were lost in the Middle Ages and not rivaled again until the 19th
and 20th centuries. An example of this is Insulated glazing, which wasn't invented
again until the 1930s. Many practical Roman innovations were adopted from earlier
Greek designs. Advancements were often divided and based on craft. Artisans
guarded technologies as trade secrets.
Roman civil engineering and military engineering constituted a large part of
Rome's technological superiority and legacy, and contributed to the construction of
hundreds of roads, bridges, aqueducts, baths, theaters and arenas. Many
monuments, such as the Colosseum, Pont du Gard, and Pantheon, remain as
testaments to Roman engineering and culture.
History of the early world
Page 56
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
The Romans were renowned for their architecture, which is grouped with
Greek traditions into "Classical architecture". Although there were many differences
from Greek architecture, Rome borrowed heavily from Greece in adhering to strict,
formulaic building designs and proportions. Aside from two new orders of columns,
composite and Tuscan, and from the dome, which was derived from the Etruscan
arch, Rome had relatively few architectural innovations until the end of the
Republic.
In the 1st century BC, Romans started to use concrete, widely. Concrete was
invented in the late 3rd century BC. It was powerful cement derived from pozzolana,
and soon supplanted marble as the chief Roman building material and allowed
many daring architectural schemata.
Also in the 1st century BC, Vitruvius wrote De architectura, possibly the first
complete treatise on architecture in history. In late 1st century BC, Rome also began
to use glassblowing soon after its invention in Syria about 50 BC. Mosaics took the
Empire by storm after samples were retrieved during Lucius Cornelius Sulla's
campaigns in Greece.
Concrete made possible the paved, durable Roman roads, many of which
were still in use a thousand years after the fall of Rome. The construction of a vast
and efficient travel network throughout the Empire dramatically increased Rome's
power and influence. It was originally constructed to allow Roman legions to be
rapidly deployed. But these highways also had enormous economic significance,
solidifying Rome's role as a trading crossroads - the origin of the saying "all roads
lead to Rome". The Roman government maintained way stations that provided
refreshments to travelers at regular intervals along the roads, constructed bridges
where necessary, and established a system of horse relays for couriers that allowed a
dispatch to travel up to 800 kilometers (500 mi) in 24 hours.
The Romans constructed numerous aqueducts to supply water to cities and
industrial sites and to aid in their agriculture. The city of Rome was supplied by 11
aqueducts with a combined length of 350 kilometres (220 mi). Most aqueducts were
constructed below the surface, with only small portions above ground supported by
arches. Sometimes, where valleys deeper than 50 metres (165 ft) had to be crossed,
inverted siphons were used to convey water across a valley.
The Romans also made major advancements in sanitation. Romans were particularly
famous for their public baths, called thermae, which were used for both hygienic and
social purposes. Many Roman houses came to have flush toilets and indoor
plumbing, and a complex sewer system, the Cloaca Maxima, was used to drain the
local marshes and carry waste into the Tiber River.
Some historians have speculated that lead pipes in the sewer and plumbing
systems led to widespread lead poisoning, which contributed to the decline in birth
rate and general decay of Roman society leading up to the fall of Rome. However,
lead content would have been minimized because the flow of water from aqueducts
could not be shut off; it ran continuously through public and private outlets into the
drains, and only a few taps were in use. Other authors have raised similar objections
History of the early world
Page 57
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
to this theory, also pointing out that Roman water pipes were thickly coated with
deposits that would have prevented lead from leaching into the water.
Philosophy
A final level of education was philosophical study. The study of philosophy is
distinctly Greek, but was undertaken by many Roman students. To study
philosophy, a student would have to go to a center of philosophy where
philosophers taught, usually abroad in Greece. An understanding of a philosophical
school of thought could have done much to add to Cicero's vaunted knowledge of
'that which is great', but could only be pursued by the very wealthiest of Rome's
elite. Romans regarded philosophical education as distinctly Greek, and instead
focused their efforts on building schools of law and rhetoric. The single most
important philosophy in Rome was Stoicism, which originated in Hellenistic Greece.
The contents of the philosophy were particularly amenable to the Roman world
view, especially since the Stoic insistence on acceptance of all situations, including
adverse ones, seemed to reproduce what the Romans considered their crowning
achievement: virtues, or "manliness," or "toughness." The centerpiece of Stoic
philosophy was the concept of the logos. The universe is ordered by God and this
order is the logos, which means "rational order" or "meaning" of the universe.
After the death of Zeno, the Stoic school was headed by Cleanthes and
Chrysippus, and its teachings were carried to Rome in 155 by Diogenes of Babylon.
Stoic ideas appear in the greatest work of Roman literature, Vergil's Aeneid, and later
the philosophy was adopted by Seneca (c. 1-65 A.D.), Lucan, Epictetus, and the
Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Stoicism is perhaps the most significant philosophical
school in the Roman Empire, and much of our contemporary views and popular
mythologies about Romans are derived from Stoic principles.
This is actually not a philosophical school, but one could generally group a
number of Hellenistic schools under this rubric, including the Second Academy, the
Second Sophistic, the Cynics, the Skeptics, and so on, and, for the most part, the
Stoics as well. What are important for our purposes are that all these schools to some
degree or another espoused the idea that human beings cannot arrive at certain truth
about anything.
Basically, life became this great guessing game: the lot of humanity is to be
cast into a twilight world in which all that we know and think is either false or
occupies some middle position between the false and the true. This comes to
dominate thought in late antiquity; the first philosophical attacks Christianity levels
against the thought of antiquity are refutations of skeptical principles. Of all the
philosophies of antiquity, this is perhaps the most familiar to you: the skeptic
principle of doubting everything became, in the modern era, the fundamental basis
of the scientific method.
For the Roman, this larger good came to mean the spread of law across the
face of the planet; this law was to be spread through Roman imperial conquest and
was called the Law of Nations. The grand design for history, then, was the spread of
the Roman Empire and her laws.
History of the early world
Page 58
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
Therefore, each and every function a Roman undertook for the state, whether
as a farmer or foot-soldier, a philosopher or emperor, partook of this larger purpose
or meaning of world history. The central values of this complex are officious, or
"duty," which is the responsibility to perform the functions into which you have
been born to the best of your abilities, and pietas, or "respect for authority." Each
station in life has its duties; every situation in life has duties or obligations
incumbent on it.
The primary duty one owes is to the state; since God is using the Roman state
to further law and civilization, performing one's duty is a religious act. The principal
being to which one owes respect is, of course, God; since God is working out his will
in history by using the Roman state and Roman officials, the respect one shows for
Roman authorities is also a respect shown for God and the logos.
Roman literature
Roman literature, written in the Latin language, remains an enduring legacy
of the culture of ancient Rome. Some of the earliest extant works are historical epics
telling of the early military history of Rome, followed (as the Republic expanded) by
poetry, comedies, histories and tragedies.
Latin literature drew heavily on the traditions of other cultures, particularly
the more matured literary tradition of Greece, and the strong influence of earlier
Greek authors is readily apparent. Few works remain of Early and Old Latin,
although a few of the plays of Plautus and Terence have come down to us.
The “Golden Age of Roman Literature” is usually considered to cover the
period from about the start of the 1st Century BCE up to the mid-1st Century CE.
Catullus pioneered the naturalization of Greek lyric verse forms into Latin in his
very personal poetry. The Hellenizing tendencies of Golden Age Latin reached their
apex in the epic poetry of Vergil, the odes and satires of Horace and the elegiac
couplets of Ovid.
The “Silver Age of Roman Literature” extends into the 2nd Century CE, a
period during which the eloquent, sometimes bombastic, poetry of Seneca the
Younger and Lucan gave way to the more restrained, classicized style of Pliny the
Younger’s letters and the powerful satires of Juvenal.
Roman literature written after the mid-2nd Century CE is often disparaged
and largely ignored, and Medieval Latin was usually dismissed as “Dog-Latin”.
However, long after the Roman Empire had fallen, the Latin language continued to
play a central role in Western European civilization.
Roman literature is a greatly varied subject matter, nonetheless because it is
such a broad and varied theme which forces us into making a vast number of
simplistic generalizations. It's breadth can be understood not only in terms of the
great variety of production which surely existed at the time a minor fragment of
which has made it down to us through the ages but also the vast time period and
geography included within the term "ancient Rome"
Cicero, A new man - made a great political career and was recognized as
"father of the nation" for his role against the Catiline conspiracy. He wrote a great
body of work, and given the generally positive view of him taken by the later
Christians good volumes of his work have made it down to us.
History of the early world
Page 59
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
MODULE IV
The decline of the Ancient World
The decline of the Roman Empire is one of the events traditionally marking
the end of Classical Antiquity and the beginning of the European Middle Ages.
Throughout the 5th century, the Empire's territories in Western Europe and
northwestern Africa, including Italy, fell to various invading or indigenous peoples
in what is sometimes called the Migration period. Although the eastern half still
survived with borders essentially intact for several centuries (until the Muslim
conquests), the Empire as a whole had initiated major cultural and political
transformations since the Crisis of the Third Century, with the shift towards a more
openly autocratic and ritualized form of government, the adoption of Christianity as
the state religion, and a general rejection of the traditions and values of Classical
Antiquity. While traditional historiography emphasized this break with Antiquity
by using the term "Byzantine Empire" instead of Roman Empire, recent schools of
history offer a more nuanced view, seeing mostly continuity rather than a sharp
break. The Empire of Late Antiquity already looked very different from classical
Rome.
The Roman Empire emerged from the Roman Republic when Julius Caesar
and Augustus Caesar transformed it from a republic into a monarchy. Rome reached
its zenith in the 2nd century, and then fortunes slowly declined (with many revivals
and restorations along the way). The reasons for the decline of the Empire are still
debated today, and are likely multiple. Historians infer that the population appears
to have diminished in many provinces—especially Western Europe—from the
diminishing size of fortifications built to protect the cities from barbarian incursions
from the 3rd century on. Some historians even have suggested that parts of the
periphery were no longer inhabited because these fortifications were restricted to the
center of the city only. Tree rings suggest "distinct drying" beginning in 250.
By the late 3rd century, the city of Rome no longer served as an effective
capital for the Emperor and various cities were used as new administrative capitals.
Successive emperors, starting with Constantine, privileged the eastern city of
Byzantium, which he had entirely rebuilt after a siege. Later renamed
Constantinople, and protected by formidable walls in the late 4th and early 5th
centuries, it was to become the largest and most powerful city of Christian Europe in
the Early Middle Ages. Since the Crisis of the Third Century, the Empire was
intermittently ruled by more than one emperor at once (usually two), presiding over
different regions. At first a haphazard form of power sharing, this eventually settled
on an East-West administrative division between the Western Roman Empire
(centered on Rome, but now usually presided from other seats of power such as
Trier, Milan, and especially Ravenna), and the Eastern Roman Empire (with its
capital initially in Nicomedia, and later Constantinople). The Latin-speaking west,
under dreadful demographic crisis, and the wealthier Greek-speaking east, also
began to diverge politically and culturally. Although this was a gradual process, still
incomplete when Italy came under the rule of barbarian chieftains in the last quarter
of the 5th century, it deepened further afterward, and had lasting consequences for
the medieval history of Europe.
History of the early world
Page 60
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
Throughout the 5th century, Western emperors were usually figureheads,
while the Eastern emperors maintained more independence. For most of the time,
the actual rulers in the West were military strongmen who took the titles of magister
militum, patrician, or both, such as Stilicho, Aetius, and Ricimer. Although Rome was
no longer the capital in the West, it remained the West's largest city and its economic
center. But the city was sacked by rebellious Visigoths in 410 and by the Vandals in
455, events that shocked contemporaries and signaled the disintegration of Roman
authority. Saint Augustine wrote The City of God partly as an answer to critics who
blamed the sack of Rome by the Visigoths on the abandonment of the traditional
pagan religions.
In June 474, Julius Nepos became Western Emperor but in the next year the
magister militum Orestes revolted and made his son Romulus Augustus emperor.
Romulus, however, was not recognized by the Eastern Emperor Zeno and so was
technically a usurper, Nepos still being the legal Western Emperor. Nevertheless,
Romulus Augustus is often known as the last Western Roman Emperor. In 476, after
being refused lands in Italy, Orestes' Germanic mercenaries under the leadership of
the chieftain Odoacer captured and executed Orestes and took Ravenna, the Western
Roman capital at the time, deposing Romulus Augustus. The whole of Italy was
quickly conquered, and Odoacer was granted the title of patrician by Zeno,
effectively recognizing his rule in the name of the Eastern Empire. Odoacer returned
the Imperial insignia to Constantinople and ruled as King in Italy. Following Nepos'
death Theodoric the Great, King of the Ostrogoths, conquered Italy with Zeno's
approval.
Meanwhile, much of the rest of the Western provinces were conquered by
waves of Germanic invasions, most of them being disconnected politically from the
East altogether and continuing a slow decline. Although Roman political authority
in the West was lost, Roman culture would last in most parts of the former Western
provinces into the 6th century and beyond.
The first invasions disrupted the West to some degree, but it was the Gothic
War launched by the Eastern Emperor Justinian in the 6th century, and meant to
reunite the Empire, that eventually caused the most damage to Italy, as well as
straining the Eastern Empire militarily. Following these wars, Rome and other
Italian cities would fall into severe decline (Rome itself was almost completely
abandoned). Another blow came with the Persian invasion of the East in the 7th
century, immediately followed by the Muslim conquests, especially of Egypt, which
curtailed much of the key trade in the Mediterranean on which Europe depended.
The Empire was to live on in the East for many centuries, and enjoy periods of
recovery and cultural brilliance, but its size would remain a fraction of what it had
been in classical times. It became an essentially regional power, centered on Greece
and Anatolia. Modern historians tend to prefer the term Byzantine Empire for the
eastern, medieval stage of the Roman Empire.
The various theories and explanations for the fall of the Roman Empire in the
West may be very broadly classified into four schools of thought, although the
classification is not without overlap:
History of the early world
Page 61
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
The tradition positing general malaise goes back to Edward Gibbon who
argued that the edifice of the Roman Empire had been built on unsound foundations
to begin with. According to Gibbon, the fall was - in the final analysis - inevitable.
On the other hand, Gibbon had assigned a major portion of the responsibility for the
decay to the influence of Christianity, and is often, though perhaps unjustly, seen as
the founding father of the school of meno-causal explanation.
On the other hand, the school of catastrophic collapse holds that the fall of the
Empire had not been a pre-determined event and need not be taken for granted.
Rather, it was due to the combined effect of a number of adverse processes, many of
them set in motion by the Migration of the Peoples that together applied too much
stress to the Empire's basically sound structure.
Finally, the transformation school challenges the whole notion of the 'fall' of
the Empire, asking to distinguish between the fall into disuse of a particular political
dispensation, anyway unworkable towards its end, and the fate of the Roman
civilization which under-girded the Empire. According to this school, drawing its
basic premise from the Pirenne thesis, the Roman world underwent a gradual
(though often violent) series of transformations, morphing into the medieval world.
Causes of the Decline
1. Invasions by Barbarian tribes
The most straightforward theory for Western Rome’s collapse pins the fall on a
string of military losses sustained against outside forces. Rome had tangled with
Germanic tribes for centuries, but by the 300s “barbarian” groups like the Goths had
encroached beyond the Empire’s borders. The Romans weathered a Germanic
uprising in the late fourth century, but in 410 the Visigoth King Alaric successfully
sacked the city of Rome. The Empire spent the next several decades under constant
threat before “the Eternal City” was raided again in 455, this time by the Vandals.
Finally, in 476, the Germanic leader Odoacer staged a revolt and deposed the
Emperor Romulus Augustulus. From then on, no Roman emperor would ever again
rule from a post in Italy, leading many to cite 476 as the year the Western Empire
suffered its deathblow.
2. Economic troubles and overreliance on slave labor
Even as Rome was under attack from outside forces, it was also crumbling from
within thanks to a severe financial crisis. Constant wars and overspending had
significantly lightened imperial coffers, and oppressive taxation and inflation had
widened the gap between rich and poor. In the hope of avoiding the taxman, many
members of the wealthy classes had even fled to the countryside and set up
independent fiefdoms. At the same time, the empire was rocked by a labor deficit.
Rome’s economy depended on slaves to till its fields and work as craftsmen, and its
military might had traditionally provided a fresh influx of conquered peoples to put
to work. But when expansion ground to a halt in the second century, Rome’s supply
of slaves and other war treasures began to dry up. A further blow came in the fifth
century, when the Vandals claimed North Africa and began disrupting the empire’s
History of the early world
Page 62
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
trade by prowling the Mediterranean as pirates. With its economy faltering and its
commercial and agricultural production in decline, the Empire began to lose its grip
on Europe.
3. The rise of the Eastern Empire
The fate of Western Rome was partially sealed in the late third century, when
the Emperor Diocletian divided the Empire into two halves—the Western Empire
seated in the city of Milan, and the Eastern Empire in Byzantium, later known as
Constantinople. The division made the empire more easily governable in the short
term, but over time the two halves drifted apart. East and West failed to adequately
work together to combat outside threats, and the two often squabbled over resources
and military aid. As the gulf widened, the largely Greek-speaking Eastern Empire
grew in wealth while the Latin-speaking West descended into economic crisis. Most
importantly, the strength of the Eastern Empire served to divert Barbarian invasions
to the West. Emperors like Constantine ensured that the city of Constantinople was
fortified and well guarded, but Italy and the city of Rome—which only had symbolic
value for many in the East—were left vulnerable. The Western political structure
would finally disintegrate in the fifth century, but the Eastern Empire endured in
some form for another thousand years before being overwhelmed by the Ottoman
Empire in the 1400s.
4. Overexpansion and military overspending
At its height, the Roman Empire stretched from the Atlantic Ocean all the way
to the Euphrates River in the Middle East, but its grandeur may have also been its
downfall. With such a vast territory to govern, the empire faced an administrative
and logistical nightmare. Even with their excellent road systems, the Romans were
unable to communicate quickly or effectively enough to manage their holdings.
Rome struggled to marshal enough troops and resources to defend its frontiers from
local rebellions and outside attacks, and by the second century the Emperor Hadrian
was forced to build his famous wall in Britain just to keep the enemy at bay. As more
and more funds were funneled into the military upkeep of the empire, technological
advancement slowed and Rome’s civil infrastructure fell into disrepair.
5. Government corruption and political instability
If Rome’s sheer size made it difficult to govern, ineffective and inconsistent
leadership only served to magnify the problem. Being the Roman emperor had
always been a particularly dangerous job, but during the tumultuous second and
third centuries it nearly became a death sentence. Civil war thrust the empire into
chaos, and more than 20 men took the throne in the span of only 75 years, usually
after the murder of their predecessor. The Praetorian Guard—the emperor’s
personal bodyguards—assassinated and installed new sovereigns at will, and once
even auctioned the spot off to the highest bidder. The political rot also extended to
the Roman Senate, which failed to temper the excesses of the emperors due to its
own widespread corruption and incompetence. As the situation worsened, civic
pride waned and many Roman citizens lost trust in their leadership.
6. The arrival of the Huns and the migration of the Barbarian tribes
History of the early world
Page 63
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
The Barbarian attacks on Rome partially stemmed from a mass migration
caused by the Huns’ invasion of Europe in the late fourth century. When these
Eurasian warriors rampaged through northern Europe, they drove many Germanic
tribes to the borders of the Roman Empire. The Romans grudgingly allowed
members of the Visigoth tribe to cross south of the Danube and into the safety of
Roman territory, but they treated them with extreme cruelty. According to the
historian Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman officials even forced the starving Goths to
trade their children into slavery in exchange for dog meat. In brutalizing the Goths,
the Romans created a dangerous enemy within their own borders. When the
oppression became too much to bear, the Goths rose up in revolt and eventually
routed a Roman army and killed the Eastern Emperor Valens during the Battle of
Adrianople in A.D. 378. The shocked Romans negotiated a flimsy peace with the
barbarians, but the truce unraveled in 410, when the Goth King Alaric moved west
and sacked Rome. With the Western Empire weakened, Germanic tribes like the
Vandals and the Saxons were able to surge across its borders and occupy Britain,
Spain and North Africa.
7. Christianity and the loss of traditional values
The decline of Rome dovetailed with the spread of Christianity, and some
have argued that the rise of a new faith helped contribute to the empire’s fall. The
Edict of Milan legalized Christianity in 313, and it later became the state religion in
380. These decrees ended centuries of persecution, but they may have also eroded
the traditional Roman values system. Christianity displaced the polytheistic Roman
religion, which viewed the emperor as having a divine status, and also shifted focus
away from the glory of the state and onto a sole deity. Meanwhile, popes and other
church eladers took an increased role in political affairs, further complicating
governance. The 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon was the most famous
proponent of this theory, but his take has since been widely criticized. While the
spread of Christianity may have played a small role in curbing Roman civic virtue,
most scholars now argue that its influence paled in comparison to military, economic
and administrative factors.
8. Weakening of the Roman legions
For most of its history, Rome’s military was the envy of the ancient world. But
during the decline, the makeup of the once mighty legions began to change. Unable
to recruit enough soldiers from the Roman citizenry, emperors like Diocletian and
Constantine began hiring foreign mercenaries to prop up their armies. The ranks of
the legions eventually swelled with Germanic Goths and other barbarians, so much
so that Romans began using the Latin word “barbarus” in place of “soldier.” While
these Germanic soldiers of fortune proved to be fierce warriors, they also had little
or no loyalty to the empire, and their power-hungry officers often turned against
their Roman employers. In fact, many of the barbarians who sacked the city of Rome
and brought down the Western Empire had earned their military stripes while
serving in the Roman legions.
There were certain theories put forward by some scholars an d historians
related to the Decline of the Roman Empire.
History of the early world
Page 64
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
Edward Gibbon
The decline of the Roman Empire is a historical theme that was introduced
by historian Edward Gibbon in his book The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(1776). He started an ongoing historiographical discussion about what caused the
Fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the reduced power of the remaining Eastern
Empire, in the 4th–5th centuries. Gibbon was not the first to speculate on why the
Empire collapsed, but he was the first to give a well-researched and well-referenced
account. Many theories of causality have been explored. In 1984, Alexander
Demandt enumerated 210 different theories on why Rome fell, and new theories
emerged thereafter. Gibbon himself explored ideas of internal decline (the
disintegration of political, economic, military, and other social institutions, civil
wars) and of attacks from outside the Empire. "From the eighteenth century
onward," historian Glen Bowersock wrote, "we have been obsessed with the fall: it
has been valued as an archetype for every perceived decline, and, hence, as a symbol
for our own fears."
There is no consensus on a date for the start of the Decline. Gibbon started his
account in 98. The year 376 is taken as pivotal by many modern historians. In that
year there was an unmanageable influx of Goths and other barbarians into the
Balkan provinces, and the situation of the Western Empire generally worsened
thereafter, with recoveries being incomplete and temporary. Significant events
include the Battle of Adrianople in 378, the death of Theodosius I in 395 (the last
time the Roman Empire was politically unified), the crossing of the Rhine in 406 by
Germanic tribes, the execution of Stilicho in 408, the sack of Rome in 410, the death
of Constantius III in 421, the death of Aetius in 454, and the second sack of Rome in
455, with the death of Majorian in 461 marking the end of the last opportunity for
recovery.
Gibbon took September 4, 476 as a convenient marker for the final dissolution
of the Western Roman Empire, when Romulus Augustus, the last Emperor of the
Western Roman Empire, was deposed by Odoacer, a Germanic chieftain. Some
modern historians question the significance of the year 476 for its end. Julius Nepos,
the Western emperor recognized by the Eastern Roman Empire, continued to rule in
Dalmatia, until he was assassinated in 480. The Ostrogothic rulers of Italia
considered themselves upholders of the direct line of Roman tradition, and the
Eastern emperors considered themselves the sole rightful Roman rulers of a united
empire. Roman cultural traditions continued throughout the territory of the Western
Empire, and a recent school of interpretation argues that the great political changes
can more accurately be described as a complex cultural transformation, rather than a
fall.
In The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88), Edward
Gibbon famously placed the blame on a loss of civic virtue among the Roman
citizens. They gradually entrusted the role of defending the Empire to barbarian
mercenaries who eventually turned on them. Gibbon held that Christianity
contributed to this shift by making the populace less interested in the worldly hereand-now because it was willing to wait for the rewards of heaven. In discussing
Barbarism and Christianity I have actually been discussing the Fall of Rome.
History of the early world
Page 65
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
Vegetius on military decline
Writing in the 5th century, the Roman historian Vegetius pleaded for reform
of what must have been a greatly weakened army. The historian Arther Ferrill has
suggested that the Roman Empire – particularly the military – declined largely as a
result of an influx of Germanic mercenaries into the ranks of the legions. This
"Germanization" and the resultant cultural dilution or "barbarization" led not only to
a decline in the standard of drill and overall military preparedness within the
Empire, but also to a decline of loyalty to the Roman government in favor of loyalty
to commanders. .
Arnold J. Toynbee and James Burke
In contrast with the declining empire theories, historians such as Arnold J.
Toynbee and James Burke argue that the Roman Empire itself was a rotten system
from its inception, and that the entire Imperial era was one of steady decay of
institutions founded in Republican times. In their view, the Empire could never have
lasted longer than it did without radical reforms that no Emperor could implement.
The Romans had no budgetary system and thus wasted whatever resources they had
available. The economy of the Empire was a Raubwirtschaft or plunder economy
based on looting existing resources rather than producing anything new. The Empire
relied on riches from conquered territories (this source of revenue ending, of course,
with the end of Roman territorial expansion) or on a pattern of tax collection that
drove small-scale farmers into destitution (and onto a dole that required even more
exactions upon those who could not escape taxation), or into dependency upon a
landed élite exempt from taxation. With the cessation of tribute from conquered
territories, the full cost of their military machine had to be borne by the citizenry.
An economy based upon slave labor precluded a middle class with buying
power. The Roman Empire produced few exportable goods. Material innovation,
whether through entrepreneurialism or technological advancement, all but ended
long before the final dissolution of the Empire. Meanwhile the costs of military
defense and the pomp of Emperors continued. Financial needs continued to increase,
but the means of meeting them steadily eroded. In the end, due to economic failure,
even the armor and weaponry of soldiers became so obsolete that the enemies of the
Empire had better armor and weapons as well as larger forces. The decrepit social
order offered so little to its subjects that many saw the barbarian invasion as
liberation from onerous obligations to the ruling class.
By the late 5th century the barbarian conqueror Odoacer had no use for the
formality of an Empire upon deposing Romulus Augustus and chose neither to
assume the title of Emperor himself nor to select a puppet, although legally he kept
the lands as a commander of the Eastern Empire and maintained the Roman
institutions such as the consulship. The formal end of the Roman Empire on the
West in AD 476 thus corresponds with the time in which the Empire and the title
Emperor no longer had value.
Michael Rostovtzeff, Ludwig von Mises, and Bruce Bartlett
Historian Michael Rostovtzeff and economist Ludwig von Mises both argued
that unsound economic policies played a key role in the impoverishment and decay
History of the early world
Page 66
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
of the Roman Empire. According to them, by the 2nd century AD, the Roman
Empire had developed a complex market economy in which trade was relatively
free. Tariffs were low and laws controlling the prices of foodstuffs and other
commodities had little impact because they did not fix the prices significantly below
their market levels. After the 3rd century, however, debasement of the currency (i.e.,
the minting of coins with diminishing content of gold, silver, and bronze) led to
inflation. The price control laws then resulted in prices that were significantly below
their free-market equilibrium levels. It should, however, be noted that Constantine
initiated a successful reform of the currency which was completed before the
barbarian invasions of the 4th century, and that thereafter the currency remained
sound everywhere that remained within the empire until at least the 11th century at any rate for gold coins.
According to Rostovtzeff and Mises, artificially low prices led to the scarcity
of foodstuffs, particularly in cities, whose inhabitants depended on trade to obtain
them. Despite laws passed to prevent migration from the cities to the countryside,
urban areas gradually became depopulated and many Roman citizens abandoned
their specialized trades to practice subsistence agriculture. This, coupled with
increasingly oppressive and arbitrary taxation, led to a severe net decrease in trade,
technical innovation, and the overall wealth of the Empire.
Bruce Bartlett traces the beginning of debasement to the reign of Nero. He
claims that the emperors increasingly relied on the army as the sole source of their
power, and therefore their economic policy was driven more and more by a desire to
increase military funding in order to buy the army's loyalty. By the 3rd century,
according to Bartlett, the monetary economy had collapsed. But the imperial
government was now in a position where it had to satisfy the demands of the army
at all costs. Failure to do so would result in the army forcibly deposing the emperor
and installing a new one. Therefore, being unable to increase monetary taxes, the
Roman Empire had to resort to direct requisitioning of physical goods anywhere it
could find them - for example taking food and cattle from farmers. The result, in
Bartlett's view, was social chaos, and this led to different responses from the
authorities and from the common people. The authorities tried to restore order by
requiring free people (i.e. non-slaves) to remain in the same occupation or even at
the same place of employment. Eventually, this practice was extended to force
children to follow the same occupation as their parents. So, for instance, farmers
were tied to the land, and the sons of soldiers had to become soldiers themselves.
Many common people reacted by moving to the countryside, sometimes joining the
estates of the wealthy and in general trying to be self-sufficient and interact as little
as possible with the imperial authorities. Thus, according to Bartlett, Roman society
began to dissolve into a number of separate estates that operated as closed systems,
provided for all their own needs and did not engage in trade at all. These were the
beginnings of feudalism.
Transition to Medieval
The decline and fall of Western Roman Empire towards the end of the 5 th
century has been interpreted by historians to mark the end of the ancient period and
the beginning of the medieval period. More recent scholars offer a more nuanced
History of the early world
Page 67
SCHOOL OF DISTANCE DEUCATION
view from the traditional historical narrative. However, equating the beginning of
the medieval period with that of the emergence of feudalism has become a problem
of debate. The transition debate regarding the transition from ancient to medieval is
still an ongoing problem among the historians.
A Study of History, Arnold J Toynbee, supported the view that the end of the
ancient Roman Empire was the end of the ancient period and it marked the
transition from the ancient to the middle ages in Europe. He started that the ancient
Roman Empire itself was one of steady decay of inst5itution founded in the
republican times. The Romans had no budgetary system and thus wasted whatever
resources they had available. The economy of the empire was plunder economy
based on looting existing resources rather than producing anything new. An
economy based upon slave labour precluded and the pomp of the emperors also
contributed for the decline.
The Annals historian and the author of ‘Feudal Society’, Marc Bloch pointed
out that the Western Europe was subjected to a series of invasions. In the 5 th
century the German tribes attacked and destroyed in to pieces. This created great
feel insecurity among the people. It also disrupted the economy of Rome. so
everyone searching for security and subsistence. It marked the transition to a new
formation called feudalism.
The author of ‘Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism’ and ‘Lineage to
absolute State’ argued that in classical Greco-Roman age, slavery appears as the
dominant mode of production and the transition to feudalism is seen in terms of
change from slave society into a serf based society, caused by combination of the
production introduced by the Germanic invasions on the Roman empire. He looked
at the rise of feudalism as a long drawn process occurring at the base of the society.
It arose a consequence of a mighty clash between two social systems, each in a
process of transition.
History of the early world
Page 68